Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
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For in Sicily he saw what they would have been if they had chosen not to struggle
against their fate. He understood why the Don always said, "A man has only one
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destiny." He came to understand the contempt for authority and legal government, the
hatred for any man who broke omerta, the law of silence.
Dressed in old clothes and a billed cap, Michael had been transported from the ship
docked at Palermo to the interior of the Sicilian island, to the very heart of a province
controlled by the Mafia, where the local capo-mafioso was greatly indebted to his father
for some past service. The province held the town of Corleone, whose name the Don
had taken when he emigrated to Arnerica so long ago. But there were no longer any of
the Don's relatives alive. The women had died of old age. All the men had been killed in
vendettas or had also emigrated, either to America, Brazil or to some other province on
the Italian mainland. He was to learn later that this small poverty-stricken town had the
highest murder rate of any place in the world.
Michael was installed as a guest in the home of a bachelor uncle of the capo-mafioso.
The uncle, in his seventies, was also the doctor for the district. The capo-mafioso was a
man in his late fifties named Don Tommasino and he operated as the gabbellotto for a
huge estate belonging to one of Sicily's most noble families. The gabbellotto, a sort of
overseer to the estates of the rich, also guaranteed that the poor would not try to claim
land not being cultivated, would not try to encroach (вторгаться,
права) in any way on the estate, by poaching (to poach – браконьерствовать;
незаконно вторгаться в чужие владения) or trying to farm it as squatters
(поселившийся незаконно на незанятой земле; to squat – сидеть на корточках). In
short, the gabbellotto was a mafioso who for a certain sum of money protected the real
estate of the rich from all claims made on it by the poor, legal or illegal. When any poor
peasant tried to implement (выполнять, осуществлять, обеспечивать выполнение)
the law which permitted him to buy uncultivated land, the gabbellotto frightened him off
with threats of bodily harm or death. It was that simple.
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Don Tommasino also controlled the water rights in the area and vetoed the local
building of any new dams by the Roman government. Such dams would ruin the
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lucrative business of selling water from the artesian wells he controlled, make water too
cheap, ruin the whole important water economy so laboriously built up over hundreds of
years. However, Don Tommasino was an old-fashioned Mafia chief and would have
nothing to do with dope traffic or prostitution. In this Don Tommasino was at odds with
the new breed of Mafia leaders springing up in big cities like Palermo, new men who,
influenced by American gangsters deported to Italy, had no such scruples.
The Mafia chief was an extremely portly (полный,
man, a "man with a belly," literally as well as in the figurative sense that meant a man
able to inspire fear in his fellow men. Under his protection, Michael had nothing to fear,
yet it was considered necessary to keep the fugitive's identity a secret. And so Michael
was restricted to the walled estate of Dr. Taza, the Don's uncle.
Dr. Taza was tall for a Sicilian, almost six feet, and had ruddy cheeks and snow-white
hair. Though in his seventies, he went every week to Palermo to pay his respects to the
younger prostitutes of that city, the younger the better. Dr. Taza's other vice was
reading. He read everything and talked about what he read to his fellow townsmen,
patients who were illiterate peasants, the estate shepherds, and this gave him a local
reputation for foolishness. What did books have to do with them?
In the evenings Dr. Taza, Don Tommasino and Michael sat in the huge garden
populated with those marble statues that on this island seemed to grow out of the
garden as magically as the black heady grapes. Dr. Taza loved to tell stories about the
Mafia and its exploits over the centuries and in Michael Corleone he had a fascinated
listener. There were times when even Don Tommasino would be carried away by the
balmy air, the fruity, intoxicating wine, the elegant and quiet comfort of the garden, and
tell a story from his own practical experience. The doctor was the legend, the Don the
reality.
In this antique garden, Michael Corleone learned about the roots from which his father
grew. That the word "Mafia" had originally meant place of refuge. Then it became the
name for the secret organization that sprang up to fight against the rulers who had
crushed the country and its people for centuries. Sicily was a land that had been more