Илья Франк - Английский язык с Крестным Отцом
sexual excess that led to trouble with the police, Woltz decided to hold the parties in the
house of the public relations counselor, who would be right there to fix things up, pay off
newsmen and police officers and keep everything quiet.
For certain virile young male actors on the studio payroll who had not yet achieved
stardom (положение ‘звезды’) or featured roles (feature – полнометражный фильм),
attendance at the Friday night parties was not always pleasant duty. This was explained
by the fact that a new film yet to be released by the studio would be shown at the party.
In fact that was the excuse for the party itself. People would say, "Let's go over to see
what the new picture so and so made is like." And so it was put in a professional context.
Young female starlets were forbidden to attend the Friday night parties. Or rather
discouraged. Most of them took the hint.
Screenings (screening – демонстрация фильма; screen – ширма; экран) of the new
movies took place at midnight and Johnny and Nino arrived at eleven. Roy McElroy
proved to be, at first sight, an enormously likable man, well-groomed (хорошо
ухоженный /о лошади/; холеный), beautifully dressed. He greeted Johnny Fontane
with a surprised cry of delight. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said with genuine
astonishment.
Johnny shook his hand. "I'm showing my country cousin the sights. Meet Nino."
McElroy shook hands with Nino and gazed at him appraisingly. "They'll eat him up
alive," he said to Johnny. He led them to the rear patio.
The rear patio was really a series of huge rooms whose glass doors had been opened
to a garden and pool. There were almost a hundred people milling around (двигались
кругом, кружили; to mill – молоть; mill – мельница), all with drinks in their hands. The
patio lighting was artfully arranged to flatter feminine faces and skin. These were
women Nino had seen on the darkened movie screens when he had been a teenager.
They had played their part in his erotic dreams of adolescence. But seeing them now in
the flesh was like seeing them in some horrible makeup. Nothing could hide the
tiredness of their spirit and their flesh; time had eroded (to erode – разъедать,
разрушать) their godhead. They posed and moved as charmingly as he remembered
but they were like wax fruit, they could not lubricate his glands («смазать» его железы,
гланды). Nino took two drinks, wandered to a table where he could stand next to a nest
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of bottles. Johnny moved with him. They drank together until behind them came the
magic voice of Deanna Dunn.
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Nino, like millions of other men, had that voice imprinted on his brain forever. Deanna
Dunn had won two Academy Awards, had been in the biggest movie grosser (фильм,
приносящий огромный доход) made in Hollywood. On the screen she had a feline
(кошачий ['fi:laın]) feminine charm that made her irresistible to all men. But the words
she was saying had never been heard on the silver screen. "Johnny, you bastard, I had
to go to my psychiatrist again because you gave me a one-night stand. How come you
never came back for seconds?"
Johnny kissed her on her proffered (to proffer – предлагать) cheek. "You wore me
out for a month," he said. "I want you to meet my cousin Nino. A nice strong Italian boy.
Maybe he can keep up with you (держаться наравне; составить компанию)."
Deanna Dunn turned to give Nino a cool look. "Does he like to watch previews?"
Johnny laughed. "I don't think he's ever had the chance. Why don't you break him in?"
Nino had to take a big drink when he was alone with Deanna Dunn. He was trying to
be nonchalant (беспечный, беззаботный ['non∫∂l∂nt]) but it was hard. Deanna Dunn
had the upturned nose, the clean-cut classical features of the Anglo-Saxon beauty. And
he knew her so well. He had seen her alone in a bedroom, heart-broken, weeping over
her dead flier husband who had left her with fatherless children. He had seen her angry,
hurt, humiliated, yet with a shining dignity when a caddish (грубый, вульгарный) Clark
Gable had taken advantage of her, then left her for a sexpot (сексуально
привлекательная женщина, «секс-бомба»). (Deanna Dunn never played sexpots in
the movies.) He had seen her flushed with requited (to requite – отплачивать,
вознаграждать) love, writhing in the embrace of the man she adored and he had seen
her die beautifully at least a half dozen times. He had seen her and heard her and
dreamed about her and yet he was not prepared for the first thing she said to him alone.
"Johnny is one of the few men with balls in this town," she said. "The rest are all fags
(fag – младший ученик, оказывающий услуги старшим товращам /в английских
школах/) and sick morons (moron [‘mo:ron] – слабоумный, идиот) who couldn't get it
up with a broad if you pumped a truckload of Spanish fly into their scrotums (scrotum
[‘skr∂ut∂m] – мошонка)." She took Nino by the hand and led him into a corner of the
room, out of traffic and out of competition.
Then still coolly charming, she asked him about himself. He saw through her. He saw
that she was playing the role of the rich society girl who is being kind to the stableboy or
the chauffeur, but who in the movie would either discourage his amatory interest (if the
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part were played by Spencer Tracy), or throw up everything in her mad desire for him (if
the part were played by Clark Gable). But it didn't matter. He found himself telling her
about how he and Johnny had grown up together in New York, about how he and
Johnny had sung together on little club dates. He found her marvelously sympathetic
and interested. Once she asked casually, "Do you know how Johnny made that bastard
Jack Woltz give him the part?" Nino froze and shook his head. She didn't pursue it.
The time had come to see the preview of a new Woltz movie. Deanna Dunn led Nino,
her warm hand imprisoning his, to an interior room of the mansion that had no windows
but was furnished with about fifty small two-person couches scattered around in such a
way as to give each one a little island of semiprivacy.
Nino saw there was a small table beside the couch and on the table were an ice bowl,
glasses and bottles of liquor plus a tray of cigarettes. He gave Deanna Dunn a cigarette,
lit it and then mixed them both drinks. They didn't speak to each other. After a few
minutes the lights went out.
He had been expecting something outrageous (возмутительный). After all, he had
heard the legends of Hollywood depravity (развращенность). But he was not quite
prepared for Deanna Dunn's voracious plummet (жадный натиск, «ныряние»;
voracious [v∂’reı∫∂s] – прожорливый; жадный, ненасытный; plummet – свинцовый
отвес, гирька отвеса; to plummet – нырять, погружаться) on his sexual organ without
even a courteous and friendly word of preparation. He kept sipping his drink and
watching the movie, but not tasting, not seeing. He was excited in a way he had never
been before but part of it was because this woman servicing him in the dark had been
the object of his adolescent dreams.
Yet in a way his masculinity was insulted. So when the world-famous Deanna Dunn
was sated (насыщена, пресыщена) and had tidied him up, he very coolly fixed her a
fresh drink in the darkness and lit her a fresh cigarette and said in the most relaxed
voice imaginable, "This looks like a pretty good movie."
He felt her stiffen beside him on the couch. Could it be she was waiting for some sort
of compliment? Nino poured his glass full from the nearest bottle his hand touched in
the darkness. The hell with that. She'd treated him like a god damn male whore. For
some reason now he felt a cold anger at all these women. They watched the picture for
another fifteen minutes. He leaned away from her so their bodies did not touch.
Finally she said in a low harsh whisper, "Don't be such a snotty (сопливый) punk, you
liked it. You were as big as a house."
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Nino sipped his drink and said in his natural off-hand manner (бесцеремонная,
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развязная манера), "That's the way it always is. You should see it when I get excited."
She laughed a little and kept quiet for the rest of the picture. Finally it was over and
the lights went on. Nino took a look around. He could see there had been a ball here in
the darkness though oddly enough he hadn't heard a thing. But some of the dames had
that hard, shiny, bright-eyed look of women who had just been worked over real good.
They sauntered out of the projection room. Deanna Dunn left him immediately to go
over and talk to an older man Nino recognized as a famous featured player, only now,
seeing the guy in person, he realized that he was a fag. He sipped his drink thoughtfully.
Johnny Fontane came up beside him and said, "Hi, old buddy, having a good time?"
Nino grinned. "I don't know. It's different. Now when I go back to the old neighborhood
I can say Deanna Dunn had me."
Johnny laughed. "She can be better than that if she invites you home with her. Did
she?"
Nino shook his head. "I got too interested in the movie," he said. But this time Johnny
didn't laugh.
"Get serious, kid," he said. "A dame like that can do you a lot of good. And you used
to boff anything. Man, sometimes I still get nightmares when I remember those ugly
broads you used to bang (трахал; to bang – стукнуть, хлопнуть)."
Nino waved his glass drunkenly and said very loud, "Yeah, they were ugly but they
were women." Deanna Dunn, in the corner, turned her head to look at them. Nino
waved his glass at her in greeting.
Johnny Fontane sighed. "OK, you're just a guinea peasant."
"And I ain't gonna change," Nino said with his charmingly drunken smile.
Johnny understood him perfectly. He knew Nino was not as drunk as he pretended.
He knew that Nino was only pretending so that he could say things which he felt were
too rude to say to his new Hollywood padrone when sober. He put his arm around
Nino's neck and said affectionately, "You wise guy bum (задница; лодырь), you know
you got an ironclad (покрытый броней; жесткий, твердый) contract for a year and you
can say and do anything you want and I can't fire you."
"You can't fire me?" Nino said with drunken cunning.
"No," Johnny said.
"Then fuck you," Nino said.
For a moment Johnny was surprised into anger. He saw the careless grin on Nino's
face. But in the past few years he must have gotten smarter, or his own descent from
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stardom had made him more sensitive. In that moment he understood Nino, why his
boyhood singing partner had never become successful, why he was trying to destroy
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any chance of success now. That Nino was reacting away from all the prices of success,
that in some way he felt insulted by everything that was being done for him.
Johnny took Nino by the arm and led him out of the house. Nino could barely walk
now. Johnny was talking to him soothingly. "OK, kid, you just sing for me, I wanta make
dough on you. I won't try to run your life. You do whatever you wanta do. OK, paisan?
All you gotta do is sing for me and earn me money now that I can't sing anymore. You
got that, old buddy?"
Nino straightened up. "I'll sing for you, Johnny," he said, his voice slurring (to slur –
произносить невнятно; slur – /расплывшееся/ пятно) so that he could barely be
understood. "I'm a better singer than you now. I was always a better singer than you,
You know that?"
Johnny stood there thinking; so that was it. He knew that when his voice was healthy
Nino simply wasn't in the same league with him, never had been in those years they
had sung together as kids. He saw Nino was waiting for an answer, weaving drunkenly
in the California moonlight. "Fuck you," he said gently, and they both laughed together
like the old days when they had both been equally young.
When Johnny Fontane got word about the shooting of Don Corleone he not only
worried about his Godfather, but also wondered whether the financing for his movie was
still alive. He had wanted to go to New York to pay his respects to his Godfather in the
hospital but he had been told not to get any bad publicity, that was the last thing Don
Corleone would want. So he waited. A week later a messenger came from Tom Hagen.
The financing was still on but for only one picture at a time.
Meanwhile Johnny let Nino go his own way in Hollywood and California, and Nino was
doing all right with the young starlets. Sometimes Johnny called him up for a night out
together but never leaned on him (to lean on – опираться, полагаться; to lean –
наклоняться; прислоняться). When they talked about the Don getting shot, Nino said
to Johnny, "You know, once I asked the Don for a job in his organization and he
wouldn't give it to me. I was tired of driving a truck and I wanted to make a lot of dough.
You know what he told me? He says every man has only one destiny and that my
destiny was to be an artist. Meaning that I couldn't be a racket guy."
Johnny thought that one over. The Godfather must be just about the smartest guy in
the world. He'd known immediately that Nino could never make a racket guy, would only
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