Waltenberg

Начало книги

The jay has stopped its screeching. Hans has the tip of a sabre against his belly, a lightly curved sabre. The man who holds the sabre has a very pale, young face.

The blade trembles. There are other men behind him, on horseback, also young, red breeches, dark blue tunics, crested helmets: French dragoons.

Here in this wood?

But the front is fifty kilometres south.

The rabbits.

Hans does not cry out, he is ashamed of not crying out. Standing, arms raised, filled with such fear as he never felt before, he sees the rabbits he was watching only moments ago flee in the evening air, about fifteen grey rabbits which had rolled on the ground and climbed all over each other, with a hop and skip and a flash of white bobtail, coupling casually, all happening too far away to be able to tell male from female. ‘Anyway, according to Saint Maxence,’ Johann had just told him, ‘they are incorrigible sodomites.’

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