Подумала, что второй тур стал очень населенный, и не пора ли нам усложнять задачу, как-то: брать отрывки и покрупнее, и похитрее. Например, вспомнить Дживса и Вустера. Конечно, мы неоднократно обращались к ним, но вот, просматривая архив конкурса, обратила внимание, что не было отрывков из Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves. Давайте вывешу парочку на обсуждение - а там, глядишь, еще кому-нибудь идеи в голову придут.
Глава 3
There was plenty and to spare of the Rev. H.P. Pinker. Even as a boy, I imagine, he must have burst seams and broken try-your-weight machines, and grown to man's estate he might have been Roderick Spode's twin brother. Purely in the matter of thews, sinews and tonnage, I mean of course, for whereas Roderick Spode went about seeking whom he might devour and was a consistent menace to pedestrians and traffic, Stinker, though no doubt a fiend in human shape when assisting the Harlequins Rugby football club to dismember some rival troupe of athletes, was in private life a gentle soul with whom a child could have played. In fact, I once saw a child doing so.
Usually when you meet this man of God, you find him beaming. I believe his merry smile is one of the sights of Totleigh-in-the-Wold, as it was of Magdalen College, Oxford, when we were up there together. But now I seemed to note in his aspect a certain gravity, as if he had just discovered a schism in his flock or found a couple of choir boys smoking reefers in the churchyard. He gave me the impression of a two-hundred-pound curate with something on his mind beside his hair. Upsetting another table, he took a seat and said he was glad he had caught me.
'I thought I'd find you at the Drones.'
'You have,' I assured him. 'What brings you to the metrop?'
'I came up for a Harlequins committee meeting.'
'And how were they all?'
'Oh, fine.'
'That's good. I've been worrying myself sick about the Harlequins committee. Well, how have you been keeping, Stinker?'
'I've been all right.'
'Are you free for dinner?'
'Sorry, I've got to get back to Totleigh.'
'Too bad. Jeeves tells me Sir Watkyn and Madeline and Stiffy have been staying with my aunt at Brinkley.'
'Yes.'
'Have they returned?'
'Yes.'
'And how's Stiffy?'
'Oh, fine.'
'And Bartholomew?'
'Oh, fine.'
'And your parishioners? Going strong, I trust?'
'Oh yes, they're fine.'
I wonder if anything strikes you about the slice of give-and-take I've just recorded. No? Oh, surely. I mean, here were we, Stinker Pinker and Bertram Wooster, buddies who had known each other virtually from the egg, and we were talking like a couple of strangers making conversation on a train. At least, he was, and more and more I became convinced that his bosom was full of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart, as I remember Jeeves putting it once.
I persevered in my efforts to uncork him.
'Well, Stinker,' I said, 'what's new? Has Pop Bassett given you that vicarage yet?'
This caused him to open up a bit. His manner became more animated.
'No, not yet. He doesn't seem able to make up his mind. One day he says he will, the next day he says he's not so sure, he'll have to think it over.'
I frowned. I disapproved of this shilly-shallying. I could see how it must be throwing a spanner into Stinker's whole foreign policy, putting him in a spot and causing him alarm and despondency. He can't marry Stiffy on a curate's stipend, so they've got to wait till Pop Bassett gives him a vicarage which he has in his gift. And while I personally, though fond of the young gumboil, would run a mile in tight shoes to avoid marrying Stiffy, I knew him to be strongly in favour of signing her up. 'Something always happens to put him off. I think he was about ready to close the deal before he went to stay at Brinkley, but most unfortunately I bumped into a valuable vase of his and broke it. It seemed to rankle rather.'
I heaved a sigh. It's always what Jeeves would call most disturbing to hear that a chap with whom you have plucked the gowans fine, as the expression is, isn't making out as well as could be wished. I was all set to follow this Pinker's career with considerable interest, but the way things were shaping it began to look as if there wasn't going to be a career to follow.
'You move in a mysterious way your wonders to perform, Stinker. I believe you would bump into something if you were crossing the Gobi desert.'
'I've never been in the Gobi desert.'
'Well, don't go. It isn't safe. I suppose Stiffy's sore about this . . . what's the word? . . . Not vaseline . . . Vacillation, that's it. She chafes, I imagine, at this vacillation on Bassett's part and resents him letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would", like the poor cat in the adage. Not my own, that, by the way. Jeeves's. Pretty steamed up, is she?'
'She is rather.'
'I don't blame her. Enough to upset any girl. Pop Bassett has no right to keep gumming up the course of true love like this.'
'No.'
'He needs a kick in the pants.'
'Yes.'
'If I were Stiffy, I'd put a toad in his bed or strychnine in his soup.'
'Yes. And talking of Stiffy, Bertie -'
He broke off, and I eyed him narrowly. There could be no question to my mind that I had been right about that perilous stuff. His bosom was obviously chock full of it.
'There's something the matter, Stinker.'
'No, there isn't. Why do you say that?'
'Your manner is strange. You remind me of a faithful dog looking up into its proprietor's face as if it were trying to tell him something. Are you trying to tell me something?'
He swallowed once or twice, and his colour deepened, which took a bit of doing, for even when his soul is in repose he always looks like a clerical beetroot. It was as though the collar he buttons at the back was choking him. In a hoarse voice he said:
'Bertie.'
'Hullo?'
'Bertie.'
'Still here, old man, and hanging on your lips.'
'Bertie, are you busy just now?'
'Not more than usual.'
'You could get away for a day or two?'
'I suppose one might manage it.'
'Then can you come to Totleigh?'
'To stay with you, do you mean?'
'No, to stay at Totleigh Towers.'
Глава 13
The following day dawned bright and fair. At least I suppose it did. I didn't see it dawning myself, having dropped off into a troubled slumber some hours before it got its nose down to it, but when the mists of sleep cleared and I was able to attend to what was going on, sunshine was seeping through the window and the ear detected the chirping of about seven hundred and fifty birds, not one of whom, unlike me, appeared to have a damn thing on his or her mind. As carefree a bunch as I've ever struck, and it gave me the pip to listen to them, for melancholy had marked me for her own, as the fellow said, and all this buck and heartiness simply stepped up the gloom in which my yesterday's chat with Madeline Bassett had plunged me.
As may well be imagined, her obiter dicta, as I believe they're called, had got right in amongst me. This, it was plain, was no mere lovers' tiff, to be cleaned up with a couple of tears and a kiss or two, but a real Class A rift which, if prompt steps were not taken through the proper channels, would put the lute right out of business and make it as mute as a drum with a hole in it. And the problem of how those steps were to be taken defeated me. Two iron wills had clashed. On the one hand we had Madeline's strong anti-flesh-food bias, on the other Gussie's firm determination to get all the cuts off the joint that were coming to him. What, I asked myself, would the harvest be, and I was still shuddering at the thought of what the future might hold, when Jeeves trickled in with the morning cup of tea.
'Eh?' I said absently, as he put it on the table. Usually I spring at the refreshing fluid like a seal going after a slice of fish. Preoccupied, if you know what I mean. Or distrait, if you care to put it that way.
'I was saying that we are fortunate in having a fine day for the school treat, sir.'
I sat up with a jerk, upsetting the cuppa as deftly as if I'd been the Rev. H.P. Pinker.
'Is it today?'
'This afternoon, sir.'
I groaned one of those hollow ones.
'It needed but this, Jeeves.'
'Sir?'
'The last straw. I'd enough on my mind already.'
'There is something disturbing you, sir?'
'You're right there is. Hell's foundations are quivering. What do you call it when a couple of nations start off by being all palsy-walsy and then begin calling each other ticks and bounders?'
'Relations have deteriorated would be the customary phrase, sir.'
'Well, relations have deteriorated between Miss Bassett and Gussie. He, as we know, was already disgruntled, and now she's disgruntled, too. She has taken exception to a derogatory crack he made about the sunset. She thinks highly of sunsets, and he told her they made him sick. Can you believe this?'
'Quite readily, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle was commenting to me on the sunset yesterday evening. He said it looked so like a slice of underdone beef that it tortured him to see it. One can appreciate his feelings.'
'I dare say, but I wish he'd keep them to himself. He also appears to have spoken disrespectfully of the Blessed Damozel. Who's the Blessed Damozel, Jeeves? I don't seem to have heard of her.'
'The heroine of a poem by the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sir. She leaned out from the gold bar of Heaven.'
'Yes, I gathered that. That much was specified.'
'Her eyes were deeper than the depths of waters stilled at even. She had three lilies in her hand, and the stars in her hair were seven.'
'Oh, were they? Well, be that as it may, Gussie said she made him sick, too, and Miss Bassett's as sore as a sunburned neck.'
'Most disturbing, sir.'
'Disturbing is the word. If things go on the way they are, no bookie would give odds of less than a hundred to eight on this betrothal lasting another week. I've seen betrothals in my time, many of them, but never one that looked more likely to come apart at the seams than that of Augustus Fink-Nottle and Madeline, daughter of Sir Watkyn and the late Lady Bassett. The suspense is awful. Who was the chap I remember reading about somewhere, who had a sword hanging over him attached to a single hair?'
'Damocles, sir. It is an old Greek legend.'
'Well, I know just how he felt. And with this on my mind, I'm expected to attend a ruddy school treat. I won't go.'
'Your absence may cause remark, sir.'
'I don't care. They won't get a smell of me. I'm oiling out, and let them make of it what they will.'
Apart from anything else, I was remembering the story I had heard Pongo Twistleton tell one night at the Drones, illustrative of how unbridled passions are apt to become at these binges. Pongo got mixed up once in a school treat down in Somersetshire, and his description of how, in order to promote a game called 'Is Mr. Smith at Home?' he had had to put his head in a sack and allow the younger generation to prod him with sticks had held the smoking-room spellbound. At a place like Totleigh, where even on normal days human life was not safe, still worse excesses were to be expected. The glimpse or two I had had of the local Dead End kids had told me how tough a bunch they were and how sedulously they should be avoided by the man who knew what was good for him.
Автор Lizzy
Время 2012-01-22 23:59
deicu, спасибо Вам большое! Я очень рада! Обожаю Дживса и Вустера! Именно с них началось мое знакомство с Вудхаузом. Такую возможность упускать нельзя! Я обеими руками за!!!
Оба текста - прелесть, а объем немногим больше, чем прошлые кусочки!
в общем, идея отличная! я двумя руками "за"!
Идея на самом деле замечательная! Я тоже обожаю Дживса и Вустера! :)
Автор Lizzy
Время 2012-01-23 20:26
Мы принимаем бой! :) Доброй охоты! :)
Если понадобится, - Острый глаз!
- Острый клык!
- Острый коготь!
- Острое слово!
- Мудрое слово...
- знай, что джунгли твои! :)
У меня к уважаемым организаторам предложение-просьба: нельзя ли дать Вустера на два месяца? следующий прозаический тур совпадает с конкурсом Школы Баканова, за месяц вряд ли конкурсанты успеют подготовить качественный перевод. Надеюсь на понимание.
Мне кажется, не выйдет. Ведь 4 марта - выборы. Должны же конкурсанты подготовиться.
Вся страна готовится к выборам, чем мы хуже? Не ознаменовать ли нам это событие дополнительным поэтическим конкурсом? Надеюсь, фракция полосатиков поддержит это правильное в политическом смысле активное начинание. Кто-то на Манежку с флагом, а мы на Вудхауза с переводом.
угу гы-гы :-) главное не надорваться. Все-таки Вустер - парень серьезный, и лучше сделать один добротный (для любителя) прозаический перевод, чем два посредственных перевода.
отрывки на глазок каждый по 4-5 тысяч знаков - это один день переводческой работы. Остальные дни месяца можно посвятить другим конкурсам :)
Надеюсь, у организаторов не столь высокие критерии) Они нас поймут и простят)
Поймут, наверняка поймут.
юридический текст - да, 12 тыс. знаков в день в обычном режиме, а вот художественный перевод идет помедленнее :-)
я не перевожу юридических текстов, могу говорить только о художественной прозе :)
мне художественная проза доставляет гораздо больше удовольствия :-)