All That Man Is

Начало книги

Berlin-Hauptbahnhof.

It is where the trains from Poland get in and the two young Englishmen are newly arrived from Kraków. They look terrible, these two teenagers, exhausted by the ordeal of the train, and thin and filthy from ten days of Inter Railing. One of them, Simon, stares listlessly at nothing. He is a handsome boy, high-cheekboned, with a solemn, inexpressive, nervous face. The station pub is noisy and smoky at seven in the morning, and he is listening, with disapproval, to the men at the next table — one of them American, it seems, the other German and older, who says, smiling, ‘You only lost four hundred thousand soldiers. We lost six million.’

The American says something which is lost in the din.

‘The Russians lost twelve million — we killed six million.’

Simon lights a Polish cigarette, sees the word ‘Spiegelei’ on a laminated menu, the money on the table, waiting for the waiter to take it — euros, nice-looking, modern-looking money. He likes the fonts the designers have used, plain, unornamented.

Читать дальше →