Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
Шрифт:
that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real
and present had purified him.
Even so, his huge body in a reflex for life crashed against the Buick door, bursting its
lock. The man in the darkened tollbooth opened fire and the shots caught Sonny
Corleone in the head and neck as his massive frame spilled out of the car. The two men
in front held up their guns now, the man in the darkened tollbooth cut his fire, and
Sonny's body sprawled on the asphalt with the legs still partly inside. The two men each
fired shots into Sonny's body, then kicked him in the face to disfigure his features even
more, to show a mark made by a more personal human power.
Seconds afterward, all four men, the three actual assassins (assassin ['sжsin] –
/наемный,
toll collector, were in their car and speeding toward the Meadowbrook Parkway on the
other side of Jones Beach. Their pursuit was blocked by Sonny's car and body in the
tollgate slot but when Sonny's bodyguards pulled up a few minutes later and saw his
body lying there, they had no intention to pursue. They swung their car around in a huge
arc and returned to Long Beach. At the first public phone off the causeway one of them
hopped out and called Tom Hagen. He was very curt and very brisk. "Sonny's dead,
they got him at the Jones Beach toll."
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Hagen's voice was perfectly calm. "OK," he said. "Go to Clemenza's house and tell
him to come here right away. He'll tell you what to do."
Hagen had taken the call in the kitchen, with Mama Corleone bustling around
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preparing a snack for the arrival of her daughter. He had kept his composure and the
old woman had not noticed anything amiss. Not that she could not have, if she wanted
to, but in her life with the Don she had learned it was far wiser not to perceive. That if it
was necessary to know something painful, it would be told to her soon enough. And if it
was a pain that could be spared her, she could do without. She was quite content not to
share the pain of her men, after all did they share the pain of women? Impassively she
boiled her coffee and set the table with food. In her experience pain and fear did not dull
physical hunger; in her experience the taking of food dulled pain. She would have been
outraged if a doctor had tried to sedate her with a drug, but coffee and a crust of bread
were another matter; she came, of course, from a more primitive culture.
And so she let Tom Hagen escape to his corner conference room and once in that
room, Hagen began to tremble so violently he had to sit down with his legs squeezed
together, his head hunched into his contracted shoulders, hands clasped together
between his knees as if he were praying to the devil.
He was, he knew now, no fit Consigliori for a Family at war. He had been fooled,
faked out, by the Five Families and their seeming timidity. They had remained quiet,
laying their terrible ambush (засада ['жmbu]). They had planned and waited, holding
their bloody hands no matter what provocation they had been given. They had waited to
land one terrible blow. And they had. Old Genco Abbandando would never have fallen
for it, he would have smelled a rat, he would have smoked them out, tripled his
precautions. And through all this Hagen felt his grief. Sonny had been his true brother,
his savior; his hero when they had been boys together. Sonny had never been mean or
bullying (to bully –
affection, had taken him in his arms when Sollozzo had turned him loose. Sonny's joy at
that reunion had been real. That he had grown up to be a cruel and violent and bloody
man was, for Hagen, not relevant (уместный, относящийся к делу ['relivnt]).
He had walked out of the kitchen because he knew he could never tell Mama
Corleone about her son's death. He had never thought of her as his mother as he
thought of the Don as his father and Sonny as his brother. His affection for her was like
his affection for Freddie and Michael and Connie. The affection for someone who has
been kind but not loving. But he could not tell her. In a few short months she had lost all
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her sons; Freddie exiled to Nevada, Michael hiding for his life in Sicily, and now Santino
dead. Which of the three had she loved most of all? She had never shown.
It was no more than a few minutes, Hagen got control of himself again and picked up
the phone. He called Connie's number. It rang for a long time before Connie answered