Innocent Soldier (9780545355698) Read Online Free PDF

noble master has nothing noble about him. If there’s no one watching him he can behave just like a stable boy. But I like that in him.
    My new work isn’t so bad. I only need to work like half a farmhand. Or even less. I don’t have anything to do with my lieutenant’s food. The officers always mess together. They’ve got their own cook, or even two cooks, so that they don’t have to eat as commonly as the common troops. In the morning I wake my gentleman. I brush his lieutenant’s coats, and in the evenings, I pull the boots off his feet, polish them to a mirroring shine, wash his pants and socks, run errands for him and I don’t know what else. My new service is bearable, easy,and good. No more backbreaking labor. No stable cleaning, no
heavy
wheelbarrow loads to be trundled onto the dung heap. And every little detail is explained to me. Whatever I haven’t expressly been told to do, I can leave undone. Does the lieutenant really take me for so stupid that he has to tell me everything? As if I had nothing but straw between my ears? Never mind. What’s much more important is that Sergeant Krauter doesn’t have me in his power anymore. Because a lieutenant is far senior and has much more authority than a sergeant.
    The lieutenant owns a couple of racehorses. Beautiful creatures. Purebred Arabs. But he won’t let me near them. Is that on account of my stupidity, too? He’s brought his own stable boy along from home. I’m jealous.
    My room is tiny, but I have it all to myself. My bed, too. Never in my life have I had my own room. What more could I want? It’s a big step forward. All at once, I feel proper and distinguished. In fact, I feel much better off here than I was with my farmer.
    What about my officer? He’s very young and very spoiled. I bet he’s never had to muck out a stable or castrate a tomcat with a couple of stones. But in spite of that, he’s still a decent sort, even if there’s something half done about him. He’s halfway between mother’s milk and rum punch, as the old folks would say. But the officer’s saber and the epaulettes, they give him a lot of authority.
    I’m completely satisfied with my new life. I have enough to eat, I have a roof over my head, no fleas or lice, and a uniform that fits. I had to trade in the sky blue gear, which I couldn’t get clean anymore anyway, for a green uniform. I’m no longer part of the horse artillery, but with the mounted Jagers, like my noble lieutenant.
    And suddenly it’s not just that I may ride, I have to. That’s how quickly life sometimes changes. I have no trouble with the riding. After all, I sat up on horseback even when I was a little boy, bareback. A saddle makes things even easier. It fits your bottom like a glove.
    My lieutenant didn’t want to be attended by some kind of scarecrow, so he took the trouble to come along when I was being kitted out. He saw to it that the seat of my new pants doesn’t hang down to the back of my knees. So everything’s shipshape. Well, everything would be, if only the lieutenant would treat me like a normal human being. Which he won’t. He treats me like a little snot nose, or a person with a shrunken or underdeveloped brain.
    It’s enough to make you despair. Am I really such a useless dimwit?
    Maybe it’s not the lieutenant’s fault. Maybe all the noble gentlemen are like that and see in the rest of humanity only fools to give orders to.
    Every evening, the wellborn gentlemen pay calls onone another. Sometimes they meet at one officers place, sometimes another’s. Sometimes they collect at my lieutenant’s. Then I have to serve wine and pear brandy and run around topping up glasses. It can go on half the night. Usually, it ends around midnight because there are a couple of elderly gents in the officers’ building who can’t drink as much as they’d like, and who need sleep on account of their years. The young lieutenants, though, they can put away wine by the liter, and they smoke