Comrades of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

unheard-of infraction of regulations to the universally feared matron, sister Emma, who was nicknamed ‘the Battleship.’
    Without a word, the Legionnaire pitched the bottle of Kümmel across to Tiny, who caught it without getting up. He gargled down the drink conscientiously as he lay on his back with the pork in one hand. This is how the matron found him. For half a minute she was speechless. With glazed eyes she fixed the human gorilla who was preening himself on the bed, displaying a pair of infantry boots on the blue-and-white checkered cover.
    ‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ she asked, pointing a pudgy finger at the black, polished boots. Tiny removed the bottle from his mouth, spat over the foot of the bed and hit a bowl a couple of yards away. The nurse’s aide barely escaped being spattered. Tiny cleaned his nose by snuffling inward loud and forcibly.
    ‘What do you want, you fat sow?’ he asked.
    We caught our breath. We hadn’t noticed it, but Tiny was drunk, and in that condition he could take it into his head to do anything. Some time ago he had quarreled with a girl in an apartment on the third floor. The girl had wanted Tiny to go and bathe first. By way of protest he threw the bathtub out of the window. The racket was such that the people who were around thought a bomb had fallen in the yard and started walking to the cellar.
    The eyes of ‘the Battleship’ vanished in her fat face.
    ‘How dare you?’ she hissed, bending down over Tiny who was resting quietly on the bed as before. ‘You call me a sow?’
    Tiny answered nothing and continued chewing the pork.
    ‘Get up, you pig, or you’ll find out whom you’re dealing with,’ the giant woman growled ominously. As she bent even lower over chomping Tiny, her dress pulled up and revealed the huge hollows of her knees.
    ‘Save your powder, Fatty, I know you. You’re head nurse in this institution, and I’ve been told you’re called “the Battleship” because you’re so fat and ugly. I call you “Tub of Lard” myself. Bah, that’s that, now scram!’
    A flush spread over the woman’s round cheeks like a thundercloud over a sunny village. ‘Get up, you crud,’ she hissed, caught Tiny by the shoulder and, to our astonishment, lifted him off the bed. In the next moment she flung him to the floor, where he landed with a crash. He stared at her with deep admiration. Up to then he’d never been thrown out of bed by anyone.
    The Battleship straightened out the bed, threw the bottle of Kummel and the big hunk of pork into the trash can and sailed out of the room without another word.
    ‘Holy Mother of God, that’s a woman for you,’ Tiny mumbled, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Damn me if I won’t get hooked up with her. Just imagine the close action.’
    ‘She’ll choke you like a duckling,’ Heinz Bauer remarked.
    Tiny grabbed a drinking glass, crashed it against the wall and roared: ‘I’m going to rape that pig, you bet I am!’
    The door opened once again. As she stood there sucking a piece of candy, the Battleship filled up the doorway. She glowered at Tiny, but her stares shattered against him.
    ‘Quit showing off, you ox,’ she spat out in her deep, masculine voice. ‘Your bawling disturbs the other patients. You’re in a hospital now and not in your barracks. If you make any more trouble, you’ll have to answer to me.’
    She slammed the door with a crash, showing no concern for the peace of those other patients that just now she had been so worried about.
    ‘What a little rascal,’ Tiny cried jubilantly. He fished the bottle out of the trash can, finished it off, and flung it out of the window into the garden of the Meteorological Institute. Then he went hunting for the pork in the trash can – it had gotten mislaid among other delicacies – picked it up, brushed it off a little, and again settled down to chew it.
    ‘A gorgeous piece,’ he belched and threw himself on the bed, but oddly enough he removed his boots