Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
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and tobacco and broads just when he really knew what it was all about.
Sometimes Nino came over for a drink and listened with him and Johnny would say to
him scornfully, "You guinea bastard, you never sang like that in your life." And Nino
would give him that curiously charming smile and shake his head and say, "No, and I
never will," in a sympathetic voice, as if he knew what Johnny was thinking.
Finally, a week before shooting the new picture, the Academy Award night rolled
around. Johnny invited Nino to come along but Nino refused. Johnny said, "Buddy, I
never asked you a favor, right? Do me a favor tonight and come with me. You're the
only guy who'll really feel sorry for me if I don't win."
For one moment Nino looked startled. Then he said, "Sure, old buddy, I can make it."
He paused for a moment and said, "If you don't win, forget it. Just get as drunk as you
can get and I'll take care of you. Hell, I won't even drink myself tonight. How about that
for being a buddy (ну
"Man," Johnny Fontane said, "that's some buddy."
The Academy Award night came and Nino kept his promise. He came to Johnny's
house dead sober and they left for the presentation theater together. Nino wondered
why Johnny hadn't invited any of his girls or his ex-wives to the Award dinner.
Especially Ginny. Didn't he think Ginny would root for (поддерживать, ободрять) him?
Nino wished he could have just one drink, it looked like a long bad night.
Nino Valenti found the whole Academy Award affair a bore until the winner of the best
male actor was announced. When he heard the words "Johnny Fontane," he found
himself jumping into the air and applauding. Johnny reached out a hand for him to
shake and Nino shook it. He knew his buddy needed human contact with someone he
trusted and Nino felt an enormous sadness that Johnny didn't have anyone better than
himself to touch in his moment of glory.
What followed was an absolute nightmare. Jack Woltz's picture had swept all the
major awards and so the studio's party was swamped (to swamp [swomp] – заливать,
затоплять; swamp – болото, топь) with newspaper people and all the on-the-make
(старающийся улучшить свое положение /обычно за счет других/; ищущий
34
любовного приключения) hustlers, male and female. Nino kept his promise to remain
sober, and he tried to watch over Johnny. But the women of the party kept pulling
Johnny Fontane into bedrooms for a little chat and Johnny kept getting drunker and
drunker.
Meanwhile the woman who had won the award for the best actress was suffering the
same fate but loving it more and handling it better. Nino turned her down (отверг), the
only man at the party to do so.
Finally somebody had a great idea. The public mating (совокупление; to mate –
сочетаться /браком/;
the party to be spectators in the stands. The actress was stripped down and the other
women started to undress Johnny Fontane. It was then that Nino, the only sober person
there, grabbed the half-clothed Johnny and slung (to sling – швырять; вешать через
плечо) him over his shoulder and fought his way out of the house and to their car. As
he drove Johnny home, Nino thought that if that was success, he didn't want it.
Book 3
Chapter 14
The Don was a real man at the age of twelve. Short, dark, slender, living in the
strange Moorish-looking (выглядящий по-мавритански, напоминающий что-то
мавританское) village of Corleone in Sicily, he had been born Vito Andolini, but when
strange men came to kill the son of the man they had murdered, his mother sent the
young boy to America to stay with friends. And in the new land he changed his name to
Corleone to preserve some tie with his native village. It was one of the few gestures of
sentiment he was ever to make.
In Sicily at the turn of the century the Mafia was the second government, far more
powerful than the official one in Rome. Vito Corleone's father became involved in a feud
(наследственная вражда, междоусобица; кровная месть [fju:d]) with another villager
who took his case to the Mafia. The father refused to knuckle under (покориться) and in
a public quarrel killed the local Mafia chief. A week later he himself was found dead, his
body torn apart by lupara blasts. A month after the funeral Mafia gunmen came inquiring
after the young boy, Vito. They had decided that he was too close to manhood, that he
might try to avenge the death of his father in the years to come. The twelve-year-old
Vito was hidden by relatives and shipped to America. There he was boarded with the
Abbandandos, whose son Genco was later to become Consigliori to his Don.
Young Vito went to work in the Abbandando grocery store on Ninth Avenue in New
York's Hell's Kitchen. At the age of eighteen Vito married an Italian girl freshly arrived