Read Monte Cassino for Free Online Page B

we congratulated him and made him describe in detail what he had done with his fiancee, whom he had only known for a week.
    As we waited, we passed the time dicing. All at once Tiny said, a crafty expression on his great face:
    "Who's your heir, Porta? I mean, if you get killed? You're mine, you know," he hurried to add. "All the gold in the green bag round my neck is yours, if one day they make a stiff of me."
    Porta smiled wryly, shaking the dice over his head, and said: "Smart, aren't you? Am I to have your gold? I know what you're thinking. Did you really work that out all alone?"
    "You can't possibly know what I'm thinking," Tiny protested indignantly. "Word of honour, you're to get my gold. I've made a will on a bit of paper, like that woman in the book we were reading the other day."
    "Shut up," growled Porta. "No need to worry about me. When I was in Roumania, I had my fortune told by a respectable chap herding a lot of old nags out on the puszta. By night he stole from the big houses. One still evening, when he and I were enjoying a cup of slivovits, he offered to read my fortune in coffee grounds. It was quite uncanny. After staring into the stuff for ten minutes, while I was thinking about a pretty little piece of cunt I'd discovered in Bucharest, he suddenly uttered a ghastly howl.
    " 'Porta, I can see your glowing face surrounded by a shining halo. Sorry, that was a mistake, it's neon lights. Tremendous. Your name shining out over all Berlin. You're going to be a big business man. You understand the good things of life. You'd never cheat a poor whore. You give the pawnbroker his due and the brothel-keeper what is hers. You will steal without letting yourself get caught. A nasty war's coming. Both enemy and friends will be after your scalp, but you'll come through. You'll survive the lot of them, go to many of their funerals, but your own is so far in the future, that I haven't yet seen it in the grounds. You'll live to over a hundred. I can't see death here, though normally you can see it a hundred years ahead.'"
    "Do you think I ought to have my fortune told some time?" Tiny asked, interested, lovingly rubbing the green bag of gold teeth that hung from his neck.
    "Never does any harm," Porta said. "If the chap tries to hand you out a lot of shit, you give him one on the nut. If it's good, you give him a coin or two and swallow it all. But I do recommend, Tiny, that you keep away from wills. Those are dangerous things, especially if your heirs have any idea how rich you are."
    Tiny became so deep in thought that he forgot to shake the dice and when he threw, it was a hopeless one. He looked up at the opening of the ventilator, wiped his thumb over the control lamp on the loading mechanism, then his eyes began to twitch nervously and he exploded: "You lousy devil! You damned great bullock! Would you murder a friend for the sake of a tiny bit of gold?"
    Porta shrugged: "I'm only human and the devil is a difficult chap to stand up to. He can put the craziest ideas into people's brainboxes, but as I said: Wills and testaments--that's all a load of shit."
    Tiny flung the dice from him in a rage, dealt a kick at a shell and shouted excitedly: "You can't make a fool of me. I've got grey matter too, you know. I'll get the better of you, bet your life."
    Porta laughed and withdrew to safety behind the driver's seat. He said with a grin: "The really important thing when you make a will, is to make yourself safe against the men of darkness. You say that I'm your sole heir. I'm a business man and for all their white collars and polished nails, business men are a lot of ugly devils. If one of them gives you a cigar, you can be sure he's counting on getting a full box of them in return. All business people are in direct liaison with the devil. The world of business is a blacked-out jungle. Remember, Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutsfeldt, only the toughest can float on the surface. Countless people have tried the game, but only a