Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Damn good regiment it was, O’Flaherty,” said Clay. They would have seemed like two philosophic majors commenting from safe behind the lines had it not been that Clay was flat on his back, his face in a drawn ecstasy of pain, and that the Irishman was most evidently bleeding to death. The latter was twining an improvised tourniquet on his thigh, watching it with the careless casual interest a bashful suitor bestows upon his hat.

“I can’t get up no emotion over a regiment these nights,” he commented disgustedly. “This’ll be the fifth I was in that I seen smashed to hell. I joined these Sussex byes so I needn’t see more o’ me own go.”

“I think you know everyone in Ireland, Sergeant.”

“All Ireland’s me friend, Captain, though I niver knew it ’till I left. So I left the Irish, what was left of them. You see when an English bye dies he does some play actin’ before. Blood on an Englishman always calls rouge to me mind. It’s a game with him. The Irish take death damn serious.”

Clayton rolled painfully over and watched the night come softly down and blend with the drifting smoke. They were certainly between the devil and the deep sea and the slang of the next generation will use “no man’s land” for that. O’Flaherty was still talking.