Три товарища

Иллюстрации  
победителей читательского конкурса 
в официальной группе издательства КАРО
(https://vk.com/karo_spb)
Полины Лукьяновой и Маргариты Чувикиной

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ
Р37

ISBN 978-5-9925-1271-7

Ремарк, Эрих Мария.
Р37  
Три товарища : книга для чтения на английском 
языке / Э. М. Ремарк — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2018. — 
512 с. — (Modern Prose).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1271-7.

Вниманию читателя предлагается знаменитый роман Эриха Марии Ремарка «Три товарища» в переводе на английский язык. 
Трое молодых людей, представители «потерянного поколения», 
прошедшие окопы Первой мировой войны и связанные фронтовой 
дружбой, пытаются найти себя и свое место в мирной жизни.
В книге приводится полный неадаптированный текст романа с 
комментариями и словарем.
УДК 372.8 
ББК 81.2 Англ

Copyright © 1936, 1937 
by Erich Maria Remarque
Copyright renewed 1964 
by Erich Maria Remarque
© КАРО, 2017 
Все права защищены

Переводчик с немецкого языка — А. У. Уин

THREE COMRADES

Published by arrangement with Random House,  
a division of Penguin Random House LLC

Chapter I

The sky was yellow as brass, not yet hidden by the smoke from 
the chimney stacks. Behind the roofs of the factory the radiance 
was especially bright. The sun must be just rising. I looked at my 
watch; not eight o’clock. A quarter of an hour too early.
Still I opened the gate, and put the petrol pump in readiness. 
There was always a car or two passing at that hour wanting a 
fill.
Suddenly I heard behind me a harsh, high-pitched squeaking — like the sound of a rusty hoist being turned somewhere 
down under the earth. I stood still and listened. I walked back 
across the yard to the workshop and cautiously opened the door.
A ghost — stumbling about in the gloom! It had a dirty white 
cloth wound about its head, its skirt was hitched up to give its 
knees clearance; it had a blue apron, a pair of thick slippers, and 
was wielding a broom; it weighed around fourteen stone1, and 
was in fact our charwoman, Matilda Stoss.
I stood watching her. With all the grace of a hippopotamus, 
she made her way staggering among the radiators, singing in 
a hollow voice as she went “the Song of the Bold Hussar.” On 
the bench by the window stood two cognac bottles, one of them 
almost empty. Last night they had been full. I had forgotten to 
lock them away.
“But Frau2 Stoss!” I protested.

1  stone — британская мера веса, 1 стоун ≈ 6.35 кг
2  Frau — (нем.) обращение к замужней женщине, «госпожа»

 Erich  Maria  REMARQUE
4

The singing stopped; the broom dropped to the floor. The 
beatific smile died away. Now it was my turn to be the ghost.
“Holy Jesus!” exclaimed Matilda, staring at me with bleary 
eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you yet.” 
“That doesn’t surprise me. Did it taste good?” 
“Sure and it did. But this is so awkward, Herr1 Lohkamp.” She 
wiped her hand across her mouth. “I just can’t understand —”
“Come, Matilda, that’s an exaggeration. You’re only tight — 
full as a tick, eh?”
She maintained her balance with difficulty and stood there 
blinking like an old owl. Gradually her mind became clear. Resolutely she took a step forward.
“Man is human, Herr Lohkamp, after all... I only smelled 
it at first... and then I took just one little nip, because — well, 
you know, I always have had a weak stomach... and then... then 
I think the Devil must have got hold of me. Anyway, you have 
no right to lead an old woman into temptation, leaving good 
bottles standing about like that...” 
It was not the first time I had caught her so. She used to come 
to us for two hours every morning to clean up the workshop; 
and though one might leave as much money lying around as 
one liked she would never disturb it — but schnapps she could 
smell out as far off as a rat a slice of bacon.
I held up the bottles. “Naturally! You’ve left the customers’ 
cognac... But the good stuff, Herr Köster’s own — you’ve polished it all off.” 
A grin appeared on her weather-beaten face. “Trust me, 
Herr Lohkamp; I’m a connoisseur! But you won’t tell, Herr 
Lohkamp — and me a poor widow?” 
I shook my head. “Not this time, Matilda.” 

1  Herr — (нем.) обращение к мужчине, «господин»

THREE  COMRADES

She unpinned her skirt. “Then I’d better be going. If Herr 
Köster should catch me...” She threw up her hands.
I went to the cupboard and opened it. “Matilda...” 
She came waddling along. I held up a rectangular brown 
bottle.
Protesting, she held up her hands.
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “Honour bright, it wasn’t, Herr 
Lohkamp. I didn’t even smell it!” 
“You don’t even know what it is, I suppose?” said I, filling a 
glass.
“No?” she replied, licking her lips. “Rum. Stone Age Jamaica.” 
“Excellent! Then how about a glass?”
“Me?” She started back. “This is too much, Herr Lohkamp! 
This is heaping coals of fire on my head. Here’s old Stoss goes 
and mops up all your cognac on the quiet and then you treat her 
to a rum on top of it! You’re a saint, Herr Lohkamp, that’s what 
you are! I’ll see myself in my grave before I touch a drop of it.” 
“You’re quite sure, Matilda?” said I, making to drink it myself.
“Well, all right, then,” said she swiftly, seizing the glass. 
“One must take the good as it comes. Even though one doesn’t 
understand. Good health! It’s not your birthday, I suppose?” 
“More or less, Matilda. A good guess.” 
“No, not really?” She seized my hand. “Many happy returns! 
And lots of dough, Herr Lohkamp... Why, I’m all of a quiver... I 
must have another to celebrate that. I’m as fond of you as if you 
were my own son!” 
“Very good.” 
I poured her another glass. She tipped it down and, still 
singing my praises, she left the workshop.

 Erich  Maria  REMARQUE
6

I put the bottle away and sat down at the table. The pallid 
sunlight through the window shone upon my hands. A queer 
feeling, a birthday — even though it means nothing. Thirty 
years... I remember the time when I thought I should never 
reach twenty — it seemed so far away. And then...
I took a sheet of paper from the drawer and began to reckon. 
Childhood, school — an unresolvable complex of things and 
happenings — so remote, another world, not real any more. 
Real life began only in 1916. I had just joined the Army — eighteen years of age, thin and lanky. And a snotty sergeant-major 
who used to make me practise, on-the-hands-down, over and 
over again in the mud of the ploughed fields at the back of the 
barracks... One evening my mother came to the barracks to visit 
me; but she had to wait for me over an hour, because I had failed 
to pack my kit the regulation way, and as punishment had been 
ordered to scrub out the latrines. She offered to help me, but 
that was not allowed. She cried, and I was so tired that I fell 
asleep as I sat there beside her.
1917. Flanders. Mittendorf and I bought a bottle of red 
wine at the canteen... We intended to celebrate. But we never 
got so far, for early that morning the English bombardment 
began. Köster was wounded about midday; Meyer and Deters 
were killed during the afternoon. Then, with nightfall, just as 
we thought things were quietening down, and were about to 
draw the cork, gas came over and filled the dugouts. We had our 
masks on in good time, but Mittendorf’s was defective, and by 
the time he knew it, it was too late. He ripped it off, but before a 
new one could be found he had swallowed so much gas he was 
spewing blood. He died the next morning, green and black in 
the face.
1918. That was in hospital. A fresh convoy had come in a 
few days before. Paper bandages. Badly wounded cases. Groans. 

THREE  COMRADES

Low operating-trolleys trundling back and forth all day. Josef 
Stoll was in the bed next to mine. Both his legs were off, but he 
didn’t know that. He could not see it, because the bedclothes 
were supported on a wire cradle. He would not have believed 
it anyway, for he could still feel the pain in his feet. Two chaps 
died in the night in our room, one very slowly and hard.
1919. Home again. Revolution1. Starvation. And outside the 
machine-guns rattling. Soldier against soldier.
1920. Putsch2. Karl Bröger shot. Köster and Lenz arrested. 
My mother in hospital. Cancer.
1921...
I pondered awhile. No, I couldn’t remember. That year was 
missing. 1922, I was a platelayer in Thuringia; 1923, advertising 
manager for a rubber goods firm. That was during the inflation. 
At one time I was earning as much as two hundred billion 
marks a month. We used to be paid twice a day, each payment 
followed by a half-hour’s leave, so that one could dash out to the 
shops and buy something before next publication of the dollar 
exchange rate — for by that time the money would be again 
worth only half.
And then what? The years after that? I put down the pencil. 
There was no point in going over all that. Anyway, I could not 
remember any longer; it had been all too confused. My last 
birthday I celebrated as pianist at the Café International. It was 
then I met Köster and Lenz once more. And now here I was in 
the Aurewo — Auto-Repair-Workshop; Köster & Co. Lenz and 
I were the “Co.,” but the shop belonged really only to Köster. 

1  Revolution — имеется в виду Ноябрьская революция в Германии 
(1918–1919 гг.), приведшая к свержению монархии и установлению парламентской демократии, так называемой Веймарской республики
2  Putsch — Капповский путч против Веймарской республики (1920 г.), 
направленный на восстановление монархии

 Erich  Maria  REMARQUE
8

He had been our school friend, and in the Army our company 
commander; then he became an air pilot, and later for a time a 
student; then a speedway racer... And finally he had bought this 
show. Lenz, after spending some years drifting around South 
America, had been first to join him — then I.
I fished a cigarette from my pocket. After all, I had every 
reason to be content. I was not so badly off really; I had work, 
I was strong, I did not tire easily, I was healthy as things go... 
But it was better not to think too much about all that — when 
alone, at any rate; and especially at night. For every now and 
then things had a way of rising up suddenly out of the past and 
staring at one with dead eyes. It was against such times that one 
kept a bottle of schnapps.

The gate creaked on its hinges. I tore up the slip of paper 
with the dates on it and threw it into the wastepaper basket. The 
door burst open, and Gottfried Lenz — tall, thin, with a strawcoloured mop of hair and a nose that might have belonged to 
somebody else — stood framed in the doorway.
“Bobby,” he bawled, “you lump of obesity, stand up! Put your 
heels together! Your superior officers wish to speak to you!” 
“Herrgott!1” I stood up. “I hoped you wouldn’t remember... 
Don’t make a song about it.” 
“You’re not the only one to be considered,” said Gottfried, 
putting down on the table a parcel in which was something that 
clinked and rattled. Köster came in after him.
Lenz stood towering over me. “What was the first thing you 
met this morning, Bob?” 
I thought awhile. “An old woman dancing.” 

1  Herrgott! — (нем.) господи!; боже мой!

THREE  COMRADES

“Holy Moses! There’s an omen, if you like! Fits in with your 
horoscope exactly! I had it cast yesterday. You are born under 
Sagittarius — weak, unreliable, a reed in the wind — with Saturn 
sitting in an ugly quarter and Jupiter unfavourable this year. 
Köster and I are in loco parentis1, you understand, therefore I 
ask you to accept, for your very necessary protection, first this 
amulet. I had it from a direct descendant of the last of the Incas. 
She had blue blood and flat feet; she was lousy, and had the gift 
of clairvoyance. ‘Pale-faced stranger,’ she said to me, ‘kings have 
worn this; the power of sun, moon and earth are in it, to say 
nothing of the lesser planets... Give me a silver dollar for it to 
buy schnapps and it is yours.’ That the chain of fortune may not 
be broken, I now give it to you. May it preserve you and put to 
flight unfriendly Jupiter. ”He hung about my neck a little black 
figure suspended on a thin chain. “There. That is against major 
misfortunes... Against those of every day, there is this — six 
bottles of rum. From Otto. Every drop twice as old as you are.” 
He opened the parcel and stood the bottles up one by one in 
the morning sunshine. They glowed like amber. “Looks marvellous,” said I. “Where did you get it, Otto?” 
Köster smiled. “That’s a long story. But say, Bob, how do you 
feel? Thirty?” 
I shook my head. “Like sixteen and fifty both at the same 
time. Pretty punk, in other words...” 
“Pretty punk! What do you mean?” objected Lenz. “Why, 
that’s the most wonderful thing in the world. It means you’ve 
conquered time and are living twice over!” 
Köster looked at me. “Let him alone, Gottfried,” said he then. 
“Birthdays weigh heavily on one’s self-esteem. Early in the 
morning especially. He’ll pick up later.” 

1  in loco parentis — (лат., юр.) вместо родителей, в качестве родителей

 Erich  Maria  REMARQUE
10

Lenz knit his brows. “The less a man thinks of himself the 
better he is. Doesn’t that comfort you now, Bob?” 
“Not at all,” said I. “The better a man is the more he has to 
live up to. I find that rather strenuous and a bore anyway.” 
“Wonderful! He’s philosophizing, Otto! He’s saved already,” 
said Lenz. “The worst is over — the crisis is over — he’s past 
the birthday hour when a man looks himself in the eye and finds 
that after all he is only a poor mutt... Now for the daily round 
with a quiet mind, and to the old Cadillac to oil his innards.” 
We worked till dusk, then washed and dressed.
Lenz eyed the row of bottles covetously. “What do you say to 
cracking1 one, Otto?”
“That’s for Bob, not for me, to say,” said Köster. “You know, 
Gottfried, it’s not polite to make a gift and then throw off hints 
like a howitzer.”
“Still less is it polite to let a benefactor die of thirst,” retorted 
Lenz, drawing a cork.
The smell filled the whole place.
“Holy Mother!” exclaimed Gottfried.
We all sniffed.
“Fantastic, Otto! Outside the poets, there are not words to 
describe it.” 
“It’s too good for this murky hole,” said Lenz. “I’ve an idea... 
Let’s go and have supper in the country somewhere and take 
the bottles with us. We can finish them off in God’s great out-ofdoors.” 
“Excellent!” 
We shoved aside the Cadillac on which we had been working all afternoon, and disclosed behind it a queer-looking 

1  to crack — здесь: откупорить (бутылку)