Excerpts from
Minor Characters
By Peter Seeberg
The light in the canteen was on when Sim and Heinrich got there. The first people had already arrived and sat drinking corn-coffee and smoking cigarettes in long holders. Heinrich sat down.
´Will you get the coffee?´ he said.
Sim went up to the buffet.
´Coffee?´ asked the canteen assistant.
Sim nodded.
Two white stoneware mugs were filled. They were burning hot and he had to run the last few steps to make it without dropping them.
Heinrich looked up from his newspaper, ´Hot is it?´ He smiled, ´Do you take sugar?´
´No,´ said Sim.
´Not holding back now are you?´ said Heinrich and dug two pieces of sugar out of his pocket, one of which he held out to Sim.
´No thanks,´ said Sim, ´I stopped taking it when I was fifteen.´
But this peat-water doesn´t taste of anything without sugar,´ said Heinrich, ´of course, one has the illusion of coffee, they´re both black, it would be better to drink water.´
Is there anything in the paper?´
´What do you think? Not a thing. Well, these enemy pilots, I´ve already had enough of them. They come with a thousand planes, our fighters shoot them down and then people think that they´ve only got nine hundred.´
Translated by Gaye Kynoch
|
|
