Илья Франк - Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
force and strength. He sat straight in the armchair and he said to Hagen, "Give me a
drop of anisette."
Hagen switched bottles and poured them both a portion of the fiery, licorice-tasting
alcohol. It was peasant, homemade stuff, much stronger than that sold in stores, the gift
of an old friend who every year presented the Don with a small truckload.
"My wife was weeping before she fell asleep," Don Corleone said. "Outside my
window I saw my caporegimes coming to the house and it is midnight. So, Consigliori of
mine, I think you should tell your Don what everyone knows."
Hagen said quietly, "I didn't tell Mama anything. I was about to come up and wake you
and tell you the news myself. In another moment I would have come to waken you."
Don Corleone said impassively, "But you needed a drink first."
"Yes," Hagen said.
"You've had your drink," the Don said. "You can tell me now." There was just the
faintest hint of reproach for Hagen's weakness.
"They shot Sonny on the causeway," Hagen said. "He's dead."
Don Corleone blinked (to blink – мигать, щуриться). For just the fraction of a second
the wall of his will disintegrated and the draining (to drain – дренировать, осушать
/почву/; истощать /силы, средства/) of his physical strength was plain on his face.
Then he recovered.
He clasped his hands in front of him on top of the desk and looked directly into
Hagen's eyes. "Tell me everything that happened," he said. He held up one of his hands.
"No, wait until Clemenza and Tessio arrive so you won't have to tell it all again."
It was only a few moments later that the two caporegimes were escorted into the room
by a bodyguard. They saw at once that the Don knew about his son's death because
the Don stood up to receive them. They embraced him as old comrades were permitted
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to do. They all had a drink of anisette which Hagen poured them before he told them the
story of that night.
Don Corleone asked only one question at the end. "Is it certain my son is dead?"
Clemenza answered. "Yes," he said. "The bodyguards were of Santino's regime but
picked by me. I questioned them when they came to my house. They saw his body in
the light of the tollhouse. He could not live with the wounds they saw. They place their
lives in forfeit for what they say."
Don Corleone accepted this final verdict without any sign of emotion except for a few
moments of silence. Then he said, "None of you are to concern yourselves with this
affair. None of you are to commit any acts of vengeance, none of you are to make any
inquiries to track down the murderers of my son without my express command. There
will be no further acts of war against the Five Families without my express and personal
wish. Our Family win cease all business operations and cease to protect any of our
business operations until after my son's funeral. Then we will meet here again and
decide what must be done. Tonight we must do what we can for Santino, we must bury
him as a Christian. I will have friends of mine arrange things with the police and all other
proper authorities. Clemenza, you will remain with me at all times as my bodyguard, you
and the men of your regime. Tessio, you will guard all other members of my Family.
Tom, I want you to call Amerigo Bonasera and tell him I will need his services at some
time during this night. To wait for me at his establishment. It may be an hour, two hours,
three hours. Do you all understand that?"
The three men nodded. Don Corleone said, "Clemenza, get some men and cars and
wait for me. I will be ready in a few minutes. Tom, you did well. In the morning I want
Constanzia with her mother. Make arrangements for her and her husband to live in the
mall. Have Sandra's friends, the women, go to her house to stay with her. My wife will
go there also when I have spoken with her. My wife will tell her the misfortune and the
women will arrange for the church to say their masses and prayers for his soul."
The Don got up from his leather armchair. The other men rose with him and
Clemenza and Tessio embraced him again. Hagen held the door open for the Don, who
paused to look at him for a moment. Then the Don put his hand on Hagen's cheek,
embraced him quickly, and said, in Italian, "You've been a good son. You comfort me."
Telling Hagen that he had acted properly in this terrible time. The Don went up to his
bedroom to speak to his wife. It was then that Hagen made the call to Amerigo
Bonasera for the undertaker to redeem (выкупить /заложенные вещи/; возместить;
искупить) the favor he owed to the Corleones.
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Book 5
Chapter 20
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The death of Santino Corleone sent shock waves through the underworld of the nation.
And when it became known that Don Corleone had risen from his sick bed to take
charge of the Family affairs, when spies at the funeral reported that the Don seemed to
be fully recovered, the heads of the Five Families made frantic efforts to prepare a
defense against the bloody retaliatory (to retaliate [rı’tжlıeıt] – отплачивать, отвечать
тем же самым; применять репрессалии; retaliatory [rı’tжlı∂t∂rı] – ответный,
ответный удар; репрессивный) war that was sure to follow. Nobody made the mistake
of assuming that Don Corleone could be held cheaply because of his past misfortunes.
He was a man who had made only a few mistakes in his career and had learned from
every one of them.
Only Hagen guessed the Don's real intentions and was not surprised when emissaries
were sent to the Five Families to propose a peace. Not only to propose a peace but a
meeting of all the Families in the city and with invitations to Families all over the United
States to attend. Since the New York Families were the most powerful in the country, it
was understood that their welfare affected the welfare of the country as a whole.
At first there were suspicions. Was Don Corleone preparing a trap (западня)? Was he
trying to throw his enemies off their guard? Was he attempting to prepare a wholesale
massacre to avenge his son? But Don Corleone soon made it clear that he was sincere.
Not only did he involve all the Families in the country in this meeting, but made no move
to put his own people on a war footing (привести в боевую готовность) or to enlist
allies. And then he took the final irrevocable (неотменяемый, окончательный,
безвозвратный [ı'rev∂k∂bl]) step that established the authenticity of these intentions
and assured the safety of the grand council to be assembled. He called on the services
of the Bocchicchio Family.
The Bocchicchio Family was unique in that, once a particularly ferocious branch of the
Mafia in Sicily, it had become an instrument of peace in America. Once a group of men
who earned their living by a savage determination, they now earned their living in what
perhaps could be called a saintly fashion. The Bocchicchios' one asset (имущество
/часто об одном предмете/; ценное качество /разг./) was a closely knit structure of
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blood relationships, a family loyalty severe even for a society where family loyalty came
before loyalty to a wife.
The Bocchicchio Family, extending out to third cousins, had once numbered nearly
two hundred when they ruled the particular economy of a small section of southern
Sicily. The income for the entire family then came from four or five flour mills, by no
means owned communally, but assuring labor and bread and a minimal security for all
Family members. This was enough, with intermarriages, for them to present a common
front against their enemies.
No competing mill, no dam that would create a water supply to their competitors or
ruin their own selling of water, was allowed to be built in their corner of Sicily. A powerful
landowning baron once tried to erect his own mill strictly for his personal use. The mill
was burned down. He called on the carabineri (полицейские /итал./) and higher
authorities, who arrested three of the Bocchicchio Family. Even before the trial the
manor house of the baron was torched (подожжен; torch – факел). The indictment
(обвинительный акт [ın'daıtm∂nt]) and accusations were withdrawn. A few months later
one of the highest functionaries in the Italian government arrived in Sicily and tried to
solve the chronic water shortage of that island by proposing a huge dam. Engineers
arrived from Rome to do surveys while watched by grim natives, members of the
Bocchicchio clan. Police flooded the area, housed in a specially built barracks.
It looked like nothing could stop the dam from being built and supplies and equipment
had actually been unloaded in Palermo. That was as far as they got. The Bocchicchios
had contacted fellow Mafia chiefs and extracted agreements for their aid. The heavy
equipment was sabotaged, the lighter equipment stolen. Mafia deputies in the Italian
Parliament launched a bureaucratic counterattack against the planners. This went on for
several years and in that time Mussolini came to power. The dictator decreed that the
dam must be built. It was not. The dictator had known that the Mafia would be a threat
to his regime, forming what amounted to a separate authority from his own. He gave full
powers to a high police official, who promptly solved the problem by throwing everybody
into jail or deporting them to penal work islands. In a few short years he had broken the
power of the Mafia, simply by arbitrarily arresting anyone even suspected of being a
mafioso. And so also brought ruin to a great many innocent families.
The Bocchicchios had been rash enough to resort to force against this unlimited
power. Half of the men were killed in armed combat, the other half deported to penal
island colonies. There were only a handful left when arrangements were made for them
to emigrate to America via the clandestine underground route of jumping ship through
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Canada. There were almost twenty immigrants and they settled in a small town not far
from New York City, in the Hudson Valley, where by starting at the very bottom they
worked their way up to owning a garbage hauling firm (фирма по вывозу мусора; to
haul – тянуть, тащить, волочить; перевозить) and their own trucks. They became
prosperous because they had no competition. They had no competition because
competitors found their trucks burned and sabotaged. One persistent fellow who
undercut prices was found buried in the garbage he had picked up during the day,
smothered (to smother [‘smΛр∂] – душить; задохнуться) to death.
But as the men married, to Sicilian girls, needless to say, children came, and the
garbage business though providing a living, was not really enough to pay for the finer
things America had to offer. And so, as a diversification (ответвление; боковая линия;
/здесь/ дополнительное занятие), the Bocchicchio Family became negotiators and
hostages in the peace efforts of warring Mafia families.
A strain of stupidity ran through the Bocchicchio clan, or perhaps they were just
primitive. In any case they recognized their limitations and knew they could not compete
with other Mafia families in the struggle to organize and control more sophisticated
business structures like prostitution, gambling, dope and public fraud (обман,
мошенничество /здесь – государства/ [fro:d]). They were straight-from-the-shoulder
(сплеча, прямо, без обиняков) people who could offer a gift to an ordinary patrolman
but did not know how to approach a political bagman. They had only two assets. Their
honor and their ferocity.
A Bocchicchio never lied, never committed an act of treachery. Such behavior was too
complicated. Also, a Bocchicchio never forgot an injury and never left it unavenged no
matter what the cost. And so by accident they stumbled into what would prove to be
their most lucrative profession.
When warring families wanted to make peace and arrange a parley, the Bocchicchio
clan was contacted. The head of the clan would handle the initial negotiations and
arrange for the necessary hostages. For instance, when Michael had gone to meet
Sollozzo, a Bocchicchio had been left with the Corleone Family as surety for Michael's
safety, the service paid for by Sollozzo. If Michael were killed by Sollozzo, then the
Bocchicchio male hostage held by the Corleone Family would be killed by the
Corleones. In this case the Bocchicchios would take their vengeance on Sollozzo as the
cause of their clansman's death. Since the Bocchicchios were so primitive, they never
let anything, any kind of punishment, stand in their way of vengeance. They would give
up their own lives and there was no protection against them if they were betrayed. A
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Bocchicchio hostage (заложник; залог ['hostıdG]) was gilt-edged (с золотым обрезом;
первоклассный; gilt – позолота) insurance (гарантия, страхование).
And so now when Don Corleone employed the Bocchicchios as negotiators and
arranged for them to supply hostages for all the Families to come to the peace meeting,
there could be no question as to his sincerity. There could be no question of treachery.
The meeting would be safe as a wedding.
Hostages given, the meeting took place in the director's conference room of a small
