"It's Ramona Alvarez! Ramona, wait!" Vamenos stepped off the curb.
"Vamenos," pleaded Gomez. "What can you do in one minute and"—he checked his watch— "forty seconds!"
"Watch! Hey, Ramona!"
Vamenos loped.
"Vamenos, look out!"
Vamenos, surprised, whirled, saw a car, heard the shriek of brakes.
"No," said all five men on the sidewalk.
Martinez heard the impact and flinched. His head moved up. It looks like white laundry, he thought, flying through the air. His head came down.
Now he heard himself and each of the men make a different sound. Some swallowed too much air. Some let it out. Some choked. Some groaned. Some cried aloud for justice. Some covered their faces. Martinez felt his own fist pounding his heart in agony. He could not move his feet.
"I don't want to live," said Gomez quietly. "Kill me, someone."
Then, shuffling, Martinez looked down and told his feet to walk, stagger, follow one after the other. He collided with other men. Now they were trying to run. They ran at last and somehow crossed a street like a deep river through which they could only wade, to look down at Vamenos.
"Vamenos!" said Martinez. "You're alive!"
Strewn on his back, mouth open, eyes squeezed tight, tight, Vamenos motioned his head back and forth, back and forth, moaning.
"Tell me, tell me, oh, tell me, tell me."
"Tell you what, Vamenos?"
Vamenos clenched his fists, ground his teeth.
"The suit, what have I done to the suit, the suit, the suit!"
The men crouched lower.
"Vamenos, it's ... why, it's okayl"
"You lie!" said Vamenos. "It's torn, it must be, it must be, it's torn, all around, underneath?"
"No." Martinez knelt and touched here and there. "Vamenos, all around, underneath even, it's okay!"
Vamenos opened his eyes to let the tears run free at last.
"A miracle," he sobbed. "Praise the saints!" He quieted at last. "The car?"
"Hit and run." Gomez suddenly remembered and glared at the empty street. "It's good he didn't stop. We'd have—"
Everyone listened.
Distantly a siren wailed.
"Someone phoned for an ambulance."
"Quick!" said Vamenos, eyes rolling. "Set me up! Take off our coat!"
"Vamenos-"
"Shut up, idiots!" cried Vamenos. "The coat, that's it! Now, the pants, the pants, quick, quick, pednesl* Those doctors! You seen movies? They rip the pants with razors to get them off! They don't carel They're maniacs! Ah, God, quick, quick!"
The siren screamed.
The men, panicking, all handled Vamenos at once.
"Right leg, easy, hurry, cows! Good! Left leg, now, left, you hear, there, easy, easyl Ow, God! Quick! Martinez, your pants, take them off!"
"What?" Martinez froze.
The siren shrieked.
"Fool!" wailed Vamenos. "All is lost! Your pants! Give me!"
Martinez jerked at his belt buckle.
"Close in, make a circle!"
Dark pants, light pants flourished on the air.
"Quick, here come the maniacs with the razors! Right leg on, left leg, thereV
"The zipper, cows, zip my zipper!" babbled Vamenos.
The siren died.
"Madre mia, yes, just in time! They arrive." Vamenos lay back down and shut his eyes. "Gra-cias."*
Martinez turned, nonchalantly buckling on the white pants as the interns brushed past.
"Broken leg," said one intern as they moved Vamenos onto a stretcher.
"Compadres," said Vamenos, "don't be mad with me."
Gomez snorted. "Who's mad?"
In the ambulance, head tilted back, looking out at them upside down, Vamenos faltered.
"Compadres, when ... when I come from the hospital ... am I still in the bunch? You won't kick me out? Look, I'll give up smoking, keep away from Murrillo's, swear off women—"
"Vamenos," said Martinez gently, "don't promise nothing."*
Vamenos, upside down, eyes brimming wet, saw Martinez there, all white now against the stars.
"Oh, Martinez, you sure look great in that suit. Compadres, don't he look beautiful?"
Villanazul climbed in beside Vamenos. The door slammed. The four remaining men watched the ambulance drive away.
Then, surrounded by his friends, inside the white suit, Martinez was carefully escorted back to the curb.
In the tenement, Martinez got out the cleaning fluid and the others stood around, telling him how to clean the suit and, later, how not to have the iron too hot and how to work the lapels and the crease and all. When the suit was cleaned and pressed so it looked like a fresh gardenia just opened, they fitted it to the dummy.
"Two o'clock," murmured Villanazul. "I hope Vamenos sleeps well. When I left him at the hospital, he looked good."
Manulo cleared his throat. "Nobody else is going out with that suit tonight, huh?" The others glared at him. Manulo flushed. "I mean ... it's late. We're tired. Maybe no one will use the suit for forty-eight hours, huh? Give it a rest. Sure. Well. Where do we sleep?"
The night being still hot and the room unbearable, they carried the suit on its dummy out and down the hall. They brought with them also some pillows and blankets. They climbed the stairs toward the roof of the tenement. There, thought Martinez, is the cooler wind, and sleep.
On the way, they passed a dozen doors that stood open, people still perspiring and awake, playing cards, drinking pop, fanning themselves with movie magazines.
I wonder, thought Martinez. I wonder if— Yes!
On the fourth floor, a certain door stood open. The beautiful girl looked up as the men passed. She wore glasses and when she saw Martinez she snatched them off and hid them under her book.
The others went on, not knowing they had lost Martinez, who seemed stuck fast in the open door.
For a long moment he could say nothing. Then he said:
"Jose Martinez."
And she said:
"Celia Obregon."
And then both said nothing.
He heard the men moving up on the tenement roof. He moved to follow.
She said quickly, "I saw you tonight!"
He came back.
"The suit," he said.
"The suit," she said, and paused. "But not the suit."
"Eh?" he said.
She lifted the book to show the glasses lying in her lap.
She touched the glasses.
"I do not see well. You would think I would wear my glasses, but no. I walk around for years now, hiding them, seeing nothing. But tonight, even without the glasses, I see. A great whiteness passes below in the dark. So white! And I put on my glasses quickly!"
"The suit, as I said," said Martinez.
"The suit for a little moment, yes, but there is another whiteness above the suit."
216
"Another?"
"Your teeth! Oh, such white teeth, and so many!"
Martinez put his hand over his mouth.
"So happy, Mr. Martfnez," she said. "I have not often seen such a happy face and such a smile."
"Ah," he said, not able to look at her, his face flushing now.
"So, you see," she said quietly, "the suit caught my eye, yes, the whiteness filled the night below. But the teeth were much whiter. Now, I have forgotten the suit."
Martfnez flushed again. She, too, was overcome with what she had said. She put her glasses on her nose, and then took them off, nervously, and hid them again. She looked at her hands and at the door above his head.
"May I—" he said, at last.
"May you-"
"May I call for you," he asked, "when next the suit is mine to wear?"
"Why must you wait for the suit?" she said. "I thought-"
"You do not need the suit," she said. "But-"
"If it were just the suit," she said, "anyone would be fine in it. But no, I watched. I saw many men in that suit, all different, this night. So again I say, you do not need to wait for the suit."
"Madre mia, madre miaV he cried happily.
And then, quieter, "I will need the suit for a little while. A month, six months, a year. I am uncertain. I am fearful of many things. I am young."
"That is as it should be," she said.
"Good night, Miss—"
"Celia Obregon."
"Celia Obregon," he said, and was gone from the door.
The others were waiting on the roof of the tenement. Coming up through the trapdoor, Martinez saw they had placed the dummy and the suit in the center of the roof and put their blankets and pillows in a circle around it. Now they were lying down. Now a cooler night wind was blowing here, up in the sky.
Martinez stood alone by the white suit, smoothing the lapels, talking half to himself.
"Ay, caramba, what a night! Seems ten years since seven o'clock, when it all started and I had no friends. Two in the morning, I got all kinds of friends...." He paused and thought, Celia Obregon, Celia Obregon. "...all kinds of friends," he went on. "I got a room, I got clothes. You tell me. You know what?" He looked around at the men lying on the rooftop, surrounding the dummy and himself. "It's funny. When I wear this suit, I know I will win at pool, like Gomez. A woman will look at me like Dominguez. I will be able to sing like Manulo, sweetly. I will talk fine politics like Vil-lanazul. I'm strong as Vamenos. So? So, tonight, I am more than Martinez. I am Gomez, Manulo,
Dominguez, Villanazul, Vamenos. I am everyone. Ay ... ay...." He stood a moment longer by this suit which could save all the ways they sat or stood or walked. This suit which could move fast and nervous like Gomez or slow and thoughtfully like Villanazul or drift like Dominguez, who never touched ground, who always found a wind to take him somewhere. This suit which belonged to them but which also owned them all. This suit that was—what? A parade.
"Martinez," said Gomez. "You going to sleep?"
"Sure. I'm just thinking."
"What?"
"If we ever get rich," said Martinez softly, "it'll be kind of sad. Then we'll all have suits. And there won't be no more nights like tonight. It'll break up the old gang. It'll never be the same after that."
The men lay thinking of what had just been said.
Gomez nodded gently.
"Yeah ... it'll never be the same ... after that."
Martinez lay down on his blanket. In darkness, with the others, he faced the middle of the roof and the dummy, which was the center of their lives.
And their eyes were bright, shining, and good to see in the dark as the neon lights from nearby buildings flicked on, flicked off,* flicked on, flicked off, revealing and then vanishing, revealing and then vanishing, their wonderful white vanilla ice cream summer suit.
***
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Стиль Эдгара По очень специфичен. Для понимания некоторых частей текста следует перечитывать его несколько раз. Текст изобилует архаизмами и вышедшими из употребления современного английского языка словами и устойчивыми выражениями.
Метафоры также требуют тщательной анализа и адекватного перевода на русский язык. Тем не менее, авторские метафор лучше подвергнуть дословному пв целях сохранения индивидуального стиля автора.
Другой отличительной чертой Эдгара По является наличие большого количества предложений с инверсией. При переводе предложений с инверсией следует вводить дополнительные лексико-фразеологические единицы, междометия, знаки восклицания.
The Black Cat
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not--and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified--have tortured--have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horror--to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace--some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature of the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point--and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto--this was the cat's name--was my favourite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character--through the instrumentality of the fiend Intemperance--had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me--for what disease is like alcohol?--and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish--even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill-temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.