gojungle: переводы

→Yet surely, “neuter” in English was what one did to nouns or to tom-cats. Was not “neutral” the correct adjec-tive for chemicals? And what about “mordents?” The dictionary said that it should be “mordants.” And come to that, where did the Jew’s top fit in, and the traction (presumably “traction engine”) which was to be rinsed in sewer water? It was complete nonsense, yet curiously fascinating, as if there was a meaning in there struggling to get out. I sat for nearly two hours with a cold glass of beer beside me and the floor around me littered with screwed-up sheets of paper as I tried combination after combination to make sense of it.

→Then I looked again at the message—and saw that even if it made no sense, the words were all English or close approximations to it. Perhaps we had received the wrong telegram? I looked at the words, interested. It was rather like making an anagram of someone’s name, staring at the letters knowing that there is something amusing in there, but not being quite able to drag it out. “Neuter” and “mordents” seemed promising for starters: perhaps the manager of a local dyeworks would arrive at his office next morning to be the puzzled recipient of an urgent telegram from Vienna informing him that as a result of an amendment to the K.u.K. Adjustierungsvorschrift of 1908, ratings would now show four stripes of their vest at the collar of their jersey instead of the three pre-scribed by the previous regulation.

→throw fold under game line in neuter mordents area
jews top white rinse traction in sewer water

→“What do you mean?”

→“I, k.u.k. Linienschiffsleutnant Ottokar Prohaska, do solemnly under­ take before almighty God and upon my honour as an officer of the Noble House of Austria” et cetera, et cetera, “never to divulge to any person whatever or to commit to permanent record in any form the above par-ticulars during the lifetimes of the witnesses to this document . . . Signed Vienna the 21st day of February anno 1915.”

→I looked at the document:

→“This.” He pushed a sheaf of typescript across the desk towards me.“A solemn undertaking to secrecy which our superiors have ordered me to get you to sign before you leave this building. Don’t ask me why: all I know is that the War Ministry and the politicians are scared stiff that stories about the Sarajevo affair will leak out to the newspapers.”

→“What is that, Herr Schiffskapitän?”

→For it was dying even then: not just Old Austria but that whole brilliant, proud civilisation of Europe, even as I fought for it there on the plains of China and amid the islands of the East Indies. The defence of Tsingtao was one of the last, fading echoes of the age in which I was born; per-haps the last months in the world’s history when war could plausibly be described as a dangerous sport for gentlemen. I would rather that they had never happened, the events that I saw in those final months of the year 1914. But since they did I am glad that I was there to see them, and that I have lived long enough to record them for you.

→So once again I have prevailed upon your patience and your forbearance of an old man’s ramblings. I hope that these stories have entertained you. For these tales are as true as recollection can make them at the distance of nearly seventy-five years. I have told you how it was when I was young and in the prime of life, sturdy enough to endure such ad-ventures and still glad to undertake them in the service of my Emperor and my Fatherland, both of them long since turned to dust. Perhaps I have succeeded in picturing to you who never knew it a world that has gone for ever—and of which I must now be one of the last witnesses.

→I think that sums it all up pretty well.

→“No, I feel no regret at all. They wanted their world war, and if it had not been over what I did, then they would have found some other pretext.”

→I certainly do not flatter myself that I might have averted the World War and the suicide of a whole civilisation. Years after the war, in Prague, I happened to meet an old schoolfriend, a psychiatrist who had attended the Sarajevo assassin Prinzip in Theresianstadt prison-fortress where the youth—who had been too young to go to the gallows with his fellow-conspirators—was rotting away with bone tuberculosis as he served out a life sentence. My acquaintance had asked him once whether he felt any remorse for the carnage going on around him. The boy thought for a while, then said:

→I might have got my report to Vienna a little earlier—but then all the evidence is that it would have been disregarded as completely as all the other warnings that the Serbs were planning something; ignored, most probably, because the relevant ministerial registries in Vienna had not opened folders on any organisa-tions called Zvaz o Smrt or Crna Ruka and were therefore unable to file reports of their activities.

→I can only assume that Dusić and Kardjejev got away and either kept quiet about their activities or were not taken seriously if they did say anything. Perhaps there was complicity at the very highest level on the Austrian side; perhaps not. We shall never know. For my part, looking back on it now, I think that it was merely a matter of the blundering, blinkered ineptitude of a dying bureaucracy colliding with the theatrical, self-deceiving murderousness of Balkan politics; the two of them as fated to meet as the iceberg and the Titanic a couple of years earlier. In the end it matters very little.

→But what does it all matter? Not a great deal I think. The story of my tangential involvement in the Sarajevo murders may perhaps have entertained you, but I do not think that it adds much to our understand-ing of events, except to reveal that there were really eight would-be assa­ssins in Sarajevo that day, instead of the six uncovered later by the Austrian police.

→So we all signed the undertaking, and Fibich returned to his office, and that was the last that I ever saw or thought of him until last week. Well, the head of naval intelligence was fifty-eight in 1915, so he would now be nearly a hundred and thirty if he were still alive—a sufficiently remote contingency (I feel sure you will agree) for me to have been released from my oath of secrecy by the death of Professor Fibich.

→“I most obediently report, eighteen in March, Herr Schiffskapitän.” “Splendid: that will do nicely. I want you to witness the Herr Schiffs­ leutnant’s signature if you will: the contents of the document are not important and are no concern of yours anyway. He will sign first, I shall countersign, then you will affix the horrible ill-formed scrawl that you
dare to call a signature, do you understand?” “Obediently report that yes, Herr Schiffskapitän.”

→“Fibich, I have often had cause to remark in recent weeks that you are of use neither to God nor man, and that one of the greatest disasters to befall the Monarchy in this war was the day when you were gazetted Seefähnrich. However, you may perhaps do some small service this after-noon to justify your existence. How old are you, Fibich?”

→“Herr Schiffskapitän?”