Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
Шрифт:
summer night was hot, the gaslight feeble (слабый, хилый). It was very quiet in the
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44
apartment. But Vito Corleone was icy. To show his good faith he handed over the roll of
bills and watched carefully as Fanucci, after counting it, took out a wide leather wallet
and stuffed the money inside. Fanucci sipped his glass of wine and said, "You still owe
me two hundred dollars." His heavy-browed face was expressionless.
Vito Corleone said in his cool reasonable voice, "I'm a little short, I've been out of work.
Let me owe you the money for a few weeks."
This was a permissible (позволительный) gambit. Fanucci had the bulk (объем;
большие
persuaded to take nothing more or to wait a little longer. He chuckled over his wine and
said, "Ah, you're a sharp young fellow. How is it I've never noticed you before? You're
too quiet a chap for your own interest. I could find some work for you to do that would
be very profitable."
Vito Corleone showed his interest with a polite nod and filled up the man's glass from
the purple jug. But Fanucci thought better of what he was going to say and rose from his
chair and shook Vito's hand. "Good night, young fellow," he said. "No hard feelings (без
обиды), eh? If I can ever do you a service let me know. You've done a good job for
yourself tonight."
Vito let Fanucci go down the stairs and out the building. The street was thronged with
witnesses to show that he had left the Corleone home safely. Vito watched from the
window. He saw Fanucci turn the comer toward 11th Avenue and knew he was headed
toward his apartment, probably to put away his loot before coming out on the streets
again. Perhaps to put away his gun. Vito Corleone left his apartment and ran up the
stairs to the roof. He traveled over the square block of roofs and descended down the
steps of an empty loft (чердак; верхний этаж /торгового помещения, склада/)
building fire escape that left him in the back yard. He kicked the back door open and
went through the front door. Across the street was Fanucci's tenement apartment house.
The village of tenements extended only as far west as Tenth Avenue. Eleventh
Avenue was mostly warehouses and lofts rented by firms who shipped by New York
Central Railroad and wanted access to the freight (фрахт, груз) yards (that
honeycombed (honeycomb – медовые соты; to honeycomb – изрешетить,
продырявить) the area from Eleventh Avenue to the Hudson River. Fanucci's
apartment house was one of the few left standing in this wilderness and was occupied
mostly by bachelor trainmen, yard workers, and the cheapest prostitutes. These people
did not sit in the street and gossip like honest Italians, they sat in beer taverns guzzling
(to guzzle –
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45
matter to slip across the deserted Eleventh Avenue and into the vestibule of Fanucci's
apartment house. There he drew the gun he had never fired and waited for Fanucci.
He watched through the glass door of the vestibule, knowing Fanucci would come
down from Tenth Avenue. Clemenza had showed him the safety on the gun and he had
triggered it empty. But as a young boy in Sicily at the early age of nine, he had often
gone hunting with his father, had often fired the heavy shotgun called the lupara. It was
his skill with the lupara even as a small boy that had brought the sentence of death
upon him by his father's murderers.
Now waiting in the darkened hallway, he saw the white blob (капля; маленький
шарик /земли, глины/) of Fanucci crossing the street toward the doorway. Vito stepped
back, shoulders pressed against the inner door that led to the stairs. He held his gun out
to fire. His extended hand was only two paces from the outside door. The door swung in.
Fanucci, white, broad, smelly, filled the square of light. Vito Corleone fired.
The opened door let some of the sound escape into the street, the rest of the gun's
explosion shook the building. Fanucci was holding on to the sides of the door, trying to
stand erect, trying to reach for his gun. The force of his struggle had torn the buttons off
his jacket and made it swing loose. His gun was exposed but so was a spidery vein
(вена; жилка [vein]) of red on the white shirtfront of his stomach. Very carefully, as if he
were plunging a needle into a vein, Vito Corleone fired his second bullet into that red
web.
Fanucci fell to his knees, propping the door open. He let out a terrible groan. the
groan of a man in great physical distress that was almost comical. He kept giving these
groans; Vito remembered hearing at least three of them before he put the gun against
Fanucci's sweaty, suety (сальный; suet [sjuit] – почечное или нутряное сало) cheek