- Ладно, слушай. - Штайнер сделал глубокую затяжку....

- Okay, listen. Steiner took a deep drag. - I had nothing special. Penetrating injury to muscle tissue. There was almost no pain, but my friend lay next to me. Not some friend. A friend of mine. He was wounded in the stomach by a shell fragment. He lay on the bed and shouted. Not a gram of morphine, you know? There was not enough morphine even for the officers. On the second day, he was so hoarse that he could only moan. Begged me to finish him off. I would have done it, but I didn't know how. And suddenly, on the third day, pea soup was served for lunch. Thick pea soup with lard, peacetime soup. Before that we were fed with some kind of rinsing. Well, we, of course, let's eat. Everyone was terribly hungry. I ate too. He ate like a cattle that had not been fed for a long time, with a kind of selfless pleasure. Going over the soup and looking over the edge of the bowl, I saw my friend's face, his bitten, unclenched lips, I saw him die in agony. Two hours later, he was gone ... And I ate and ate, and never in my life has anything tasted better to me.
He made a pause.
“Well, well, you're just really hungry,” Kern said.
- That's not the point. This is different. Someone is dying nearby, but you don't feel anything. Well, let's say you feel sorry for the person. But you still don’t feel pain! Your belly is intact - and that's the point. Nearby, two steps away from you, someone is dying, and the world is crumbling for him amid screams and anguish ... And you feel nothing. This is the horror of life! Remember this, kid. This is why the world is moving forward so slowly. And so quickly back.