Вино из одуванчиков книга для чтения на английском языке
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THE WINDOW
And then the day comes when you hear the falling of the apples all around you, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples fall like rain, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to set you slowly free1 from your branch, and drop you down and down. Before you hit the grass you can forget that there was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or
green grass below. You will fall in darkness… “No!”
Colonel Freeleigh opened his eyes quickly, sat upright in his wheel chair2. He stretched his cold hand out to find the telephone. It was still there! He pressed it against his chest for a moment.
“I don’t like that dream,” he said to his empty room.
At last, his fingers trembling, he lifted the receiver and called the operator and gave her a number and waited, he watched the bedroom door as if at any moment sons, daughters, grandsons, nurses, doctors, might come in to take away3 this last vital luxury he could permit. Many days, or was it years, ago he had heard the boys below… their names — what were
1to set free — освобождать
2wheel chair — кресло-каталка
3to take away — уносить, отбирать
82 • Ray Bradbury
they? Charles, Charlie, Chuck, yes! And Douglas! And Tom! He remembered! They called his name far down the hall, but the door was locked and the boys went away. You can’t be excited, the doctor said. No visitors, no visitors, no visitors. And he heard the boys moving across the street, he saw them, he waved. And they waved back. “Colonel… Colonel…” And now he sat alone with the heart beating weakly here or there in his chest from time to time.
“Colonel Freeleigh,” said the operator. “Here’s your call. Mexico City. Erickson 3899.”
And now the far away but clear voice: “Diga1.”
“Jorge!” cried the old man.
“Señor Freeleigh! Again? This costs money.” “Let it cost! You know what to do.”
“Yes. The window?”
“The window, Jorge, if you please2.” “A moment,” said the voice.
And, thousands of miles away, in a southern land, in an office in a building in that land, there was the sound of footsteps retreating from the phone. The old man leaned forward, holding the receiver near his wrinkled ear, and waited for the next sound. The open ing of a window.
Ah, sighed the old man.
The sounds of Mexico City on a hot yellow noon through the open window into the waiting phone. He could see Jorge standing there holding the receiver out, out the bright day.
1Diga — (исп.) Алло (букв. Говорите)
2if you please — будьте добры
The Window • 83
“Señor…”
“No, no, please. Let me listen.”
He listened to the sounds of many car horns1, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleigh’s feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. He closed his eyes. He gave a series of sniffs, as if to smell the odors of the street; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. He could feel the sun on his cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much excited, drinking in2 colors and smells.
A knock on the door. Quickly he hid the phone under his lap robe3.
The nurse entered. “Hello,” she said. “Have you been good?”
“Yes.” The old man’s voice was mechanical. He could hardly see. The shock of a simple knock on the door was such that part of him was still in another city. He waited for his mind to return home — it must be here to answer questions, act sane, be polite.
“I’ve come to check your pulse.” “Not now!” said the old man.
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” She smiled. He looked at the nurse steadily. He hadn’t been
anywhere in ten years.
“Give me your wrist. What’ve you been doing to excite yourself?” she asked.
1car horn — автомобильный гудок
2to drink in — жадно впитывать, упиваться
3lap robe — плед (которым укрывают ноги)
84 • Ray Bradbury
“Nothing.”
Her look stopped on the empty phone table. At that instant a horn sounded faintly, two thousand miles away.
She took the receiver from under the lap robe and held it before his face. “Why do you do this to yourself? You promised you wouldn’t. That’s how you hurt yourself, isn’t it? Getting excited, talking too much. Those boys up here jumping around —”
“They sat quietly and listened,” said the colonel. “And I told them things they’d never heard. The buffalo, I told them, the bison. It was worth it. I don’t care. I was alive. It doesn’t matter if being so alive kills a man. Now give me that phone. If you won’t let the boys come up and sit politely I can at least talk to someone outside the room.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. Your grandson will have to know about this. I didn’t let him take the phone out1 last week. Now it looks like I’ll let him do it.”
“This is my house, my phone. I pay your salary!” he said.
“To make you well, not get you excited.” She wheeled his chair across the room. “And now go to bed, young man!”
From bed he looked back at the phone and kept look ing at it.
“I’m going to the store for a few minutes,” the nurse said. “Just to be sure you don’t use the phone again, I’m hiding your wheel chair in the hall.”
She wheeled the empty chair out the door. Downstairs he heard her pause and use the phone.
1 to take out — забирать, уносить
The Window • 85
Was she phoning Mexico City? he wondered. She wouldn’t dare!
The front door shut.
He thought of the last week here, alone, in his room, and the secret, narcotic calls across continents, whole jungle countries of rain forest, blue-orchid plateaus, lakes and hills… talking… talking… to Buenos Aires… and… Lima… Rio de Janeiro…
He lifted himself in the cool bed. Tomorrow the telephone will be gone! What a greedy fool he had been! He slipped his legs down from the bed. They seemed to be things which had been fastened to his body while he slept one night, while his younger legs were taken off. Over the years, they had destroyed him, removing hands, arms, and legs and leaving him with substitutes as delicate and useless as chess pieces1. And now they were tampering with2 his memory; they were trying to cut the wires which led back into another year.
He rushed across the room. Grasping the phone, he slid down the wall and sat on the floor. He got the longdistance operator, his heart exploding within him, faster and faster, a blackness in his eyes. “Hurry, hurry!”
He waited. “Diga?”
“Jorge, we were cut off3.”
“You must not phone again, Señor,” said the faraway voice. “Your nurse called me. She says you are very ill. I must hang up4.”
1chess piece — шахматная фигура
2to tamper with smth — вмешиваться во что-либо
3to cut off — отключать, разъединять
4to hang up — вешать трубку
86 • Ray Bradbury
“No, Jorge! Please!” the old man asked. “One last time, listen to me. They’re taking the phone out tomorrow. I can never call you again.”
Jorge said nothing.
The old man went on. “For the love of God, Jorge! For friendship, then, for the old days! You don’t know what it means. You’re my age, but you can move! I haven’t moved anywhere for ten years.”
He dropped the phone and had trouble picking it up, he felt pain in his chest. “Jorge! You are still there, aren’t you?”
“This will be the last time?” said Jorge. “I promise!”
The phone was laid on a desk thousands of miles away. Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the opening of the window.
“Listen,” whispered the old man to himself.
And he heard a thousand people in sunlight, and the faint music of an organ grinder1 playing a lovely, dancing melody.
With eyes closed, the old man felt that his body was heavier with flesh, younger, and he felt the hot pavement underfoot.
He wanted to say, “You’re still there, aren’t you? All of you people in that city in the time of the early siesta, the shops closing, the little boys selling lottery tickets. You are all there, the people in the city. I can’t believe I was ever among you. When you are away from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. All
1 organ grinder — шарманщик
The Window • 87
of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living…”
He sat with the receiver tightly pressed to his ear. And at last, the dearest, most improbable sound of all — the sound of a green trolley car going around a corner — a trolley full of brown and beautiful people, and the sound of other people running and calling out as they leaped up aboard and disappeared around a
corner…
The old man sat on the floor.
Time passed.
A downstairs door opened slowly. Light footsteps came in, hesitated, then went up the stairs. Voices murmured.
“We shouldn’t be here!”
“He phoned me, I tell you. He really needs visitors. We can’t let him down1.”
“He’s sick!”
“Sure! But he said to come when the nurse’s out. We’ll only stay a second, say hello, and…”
The door to the bedroom opened. The three boys stood looking in at the old man seated there on the floor.
“Colonel Freeleigh?” said Douglas softly.
There was something in his silence that made them all shut up their mouths.
They approached, almost on tiptoe.
Douglas bent down, took the phone from the old man’s now quite cold fingers. Douglas lifted the receiver
1 to let smb down — подводить кого-либо, покидать в беде
88 • Ray Bradbury
to his own ear, listened. He heard a strange, a far, a fi nal sound.
Two thousand miles away, the closing of a window.
Exercises
1.Read the transcription and write the word. Find it in the text to check the spelling.
[GeA] |
[rI`si:vA] |
[`vaIt(A)l] |
[`lEkS(A)rI] |
[Ik`saItId] |
[rINkld] |
[saI] |
[edZ] |
[`mAUS(A)n] |
[jEN] |
[wi:l] |
[`fa:s(A)n] |
[`hezIteIt] |
[A`mEN] |
2.Find the words in the text which are derivatives from the following (for example: invent — inventor):
south, friend, visit, polite, use, probable, familiar, appear, operate, build.
Translate the words. What parts of speech are they? Make up your own sentences with these words.
3. Explain and expand on the following.
1.And then the day comes when you hear the falling of the apples all around you.
2.No visitors, no visitors, no visitors.
3.The shock of a simple knock on the door was such that part of him was still in another city.
4.It doesn’t matter if being so alive kills a man.
5.He heard a strange, a far, a final sound.
4.Retell the story for the persons of Jorge, the nurse, and Douglas.
GREEN WINE FOR DREAMING
From noontime to sundown, from midnight to sunrise, one man, one horse, and one wagon were known to all twenty-six thousand three hundred forty-
nine inhabitants of Green Town, Illinois.
In the middle of the day, for no reason1, children would stop still and say:
“Here comes Mr. Jonas!” “Here comes the wagon!”
Always, Mr. Jonas’s voice went before him so people had a half an hour, an hour, to prepare for his arrival. And by the time his wagon appeared, the street was full of children. So here came the wagon and on its high seat under an umbrella was Mr. Jonas, singing.
He wasn’t an ordinary junkman. He was unusual in this way: you could see him not only in daytime, but often you could see him and his horse swimming along the moonlit streets. And in his wagon he carried things he had picked up here and there and carried for a day or a week or a year until someone wanted and needed them. Then all they had to say was, “I want that clock,” or “How about the mattress?” And Jonas would hand it over2, take no money, and drive away.
1for no reason — ни с того ни с сего
2to hand over — вручать, отдавать
90 • Ray Bradbury
It happened that often he was the only man alive in all Green Town at three in the morning and often people with headaches, seeing him, would run out to ask if by chance1 he had aspirin, which he had. More than once he had delivered babies2 at four in the morning and only then people had noticed how incredibly clean his hands and fingernails were — the hands of a rich man who had another life. Sometimes he would drive people to work, or sometimes, when men could not sleep, go up on their porch and bring cigars and sit with them and smoke and talk until dawn.
Whoever he was or whatever he was and no matter how different and crazy he seemed he was not crazy.
As he himself had often explained, he had tired of business in Chicago many years before. He bought the horse and wagon and decided to spend the rest of his life taking care of3 old things. He could not stand waste, because he knew that one man’s junk is another man’s luxury.
So adults, and especially children, climbed up to look at the treasures in the back of the wagon.
“Now, remember,” said Mr. Jonas, “you can take what you want if you really want it. The test is, ask yourself, Do I want it with all my heart? Could I live through the day without it? If you think you will be dead by sundown, take the thing and run. I’ll be happy to let you have whatever it is.”
And the children searched the huge heaps of different things. For a while4 you just heard whispering
1by chance — случайно
2to deliver a baby — принимать роды
3to take care of smb / smth — заботиться о ком-либо /
чем-либо
4For a while — Какое-то время