Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
Шрифт:
as a witness?"
Vito Corleone shook his head. He didn't even bother to answer. He merely said to
Tessio, "Tell Fanucci I'll pay him the money here in my house at nine o'clock tonight. I'll
have to give him a glass of wine and talk, reason with him to take the lesser sum. "
Tessio shook his head. "You won't have much luck. Fanucci never retreats."
"I'll reason with him," Vito Corleone said. It was to become a famous phrase in the
years to come. It was to become the warning rattle (предупреждающий
deadly strike. When he became a Don and asked opponents to sit down and reason
with him, they understood it was the last chance to resolve an affair without bloodshed
and murder.
Vito Corleone told his wife to take the two children, Sonny and Fredo, down into the
street after supper and on no account to let them come up to the house until he gave
her permission. She was to sit on guard at the tenement door. He had some private
business with Fanucci that could not be interrupted. He saw the look of fear on her face
and was angry. He said to her quietly, "Do you think you've married a fool?" She didn't
answer. She did not answer because she was frightened, not of Fanucci now, but of her
husband. He was changing visibly before her eyes, hour by hour, into a man who
radiated some dangerous force. He had always been quiet, speaking little, but always
gentle, always reasonable, which was extraordinary in a young Sicilian male. What she
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was seeing was the shedding (to shed – ронять, терять, сбрасывать /одежду, кожу/)
of his protective coloration of a harmless nobody now that he was ready to start on his
destiny (судьба). He had started late, he was twenty-five years old, but he was to start
with a flourish.
Vito Corleone had decided to murder Fanucci. By doing so he would have an extra
seven hundred dollars in his bankroll (roll – свиток, сверток; /сленг/ пачка денег). The
three hundred dollars he himself would have to pay the Black Hand terrorist and the two
hundred dollars from Tessio and the two hundred dollars from Clemenza. If he did not
kill Fanucci, he would have to pay the man seven hundred dollars cold cash. Fanucci
alive was not worth seven hundred dollars to him. He would not pay seven hundred
dollars to keep Fanucci alive. If Fanucci needed seven hundred dollars for an operation
to save his life, he would not give Fanucci seven hundred dollars for the surgeon. He
owed Fanucci no personal debt of gratitude, they were not blood relatives, he did not
love Fanucci. Whyfore, then, should he give Fanucci seven hundred dollars?
And it followed inevitably, that since Fanucci wished to take seven hundred dollars
from him by force, why should he not kill Fanucci? Surely the world could do without
such a person.
There were of course some practical reasons. Fanucci might indeed have powerful
friends who would seek vengeance. Fanucci himself was a dangerous man, not so
easily killed. There were the police and the electric chair. But Vito Corleone had lived
under a sentence of death since the murder of his father. As a boy of twelve he had fled
his executioners and crossed the ocean into a strange land, taking a strange name. And
years of quiet observation had convinced him that he had more intelligence and more
courage than other men, though he had never had the opportunity to use that
intelligence and courage.
And yet he hesitated before taking the first step toward his destiny. He even packed
the seven hundred dollars in a single fold of bills and put the money in a convenient side
pocket of his trousers. But he put the money in the left side of his trousers. In the right-
hand pocket he put the gun Clemenza had given him to use in the hijacking of the silk
truck.
Fanucci came promptly at nine in the evening. Vito Corleone set out a jug of
homemade wine that Clemenza had given him.
Fanucci put his white fedora on the table beside the jug of wine. He unloosened his
broad multiflowered tie, its tomato stains camouflaged by the bright patterns. The
summer night was hot, the gaslight feeble (слабый,
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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 размеры; основная масса) of the money and would wait. He might even be
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