inremajor: переводы

→In 1978 a group of friends rent­ed a large house in Scot­land for Christ­mas. Mol­ly and the man she was go­ing about with at the time, a QC named Brady, staged an Adam and Eve tableau on a dis­used snook­er ta­ble, he in his Y-​fronts, she in bra and panties, a cue rest for a snake and a red ball for an ap­ple. The sto­ry hand­ed down, how­ev­er, the one that had ap­peared in an obit­uary and was re­mem­bered that way even by some who were present, was that Mol­ly “danced naked on Christ­mas Eve on a snook­er ta­ble in a Scot­tish cas­tle.”

→“I sup­pose so.”

→As they turned about again, the phone in Ver­non’s pock­et rang. He ex­cused him­self and stepped aside, leav­ing his friend to pro­ceed alone. Clive drew his over­coat about him and slowed his pace. There must have been over two hun­dred in the black-​suit­ed crowd out­side the cre­ma­to­ri­um now. Soon it would seem rude not to go over and say some­thing to George. He got her fi­nal­ly, when she couldn’t rec­og­nize her own face in the mir­ror. He could do noth­ing about her af­fairs, but in the end she was en­tire­ly his. Clive was los­ing the sen­sa­tion in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten-​note falling fig­ure, ri­tar-​dan­do, a cor anglais, and ris­ing soft­ly against it, con­tra-​pun­tal­ly, cel­los in mir­ror im­age. Her face in it. The end. All he want­ed now was the warmth, the si­lence of his stu­dio, the pi­ano, the un­fin­ished score, and to reach the end. He heard Ver­non say in part­ing, “Fine. Rewrite the stand­first and run it on page four. I’ll be there in a cou­ple of hours.” Then he said to Clive, “Bloody Is­raelis. We ought to wan­der over.”

→George, the sad, rich pub­lish­er who dot­ed on her and whom, to ev­ery­one’s sur­prise, she had not left, though she al­ways treat­ed him bad­ly. They looked now to where he stood out­side the door, re­ceiv­ing com­mis­er­ation from a group of mourn­ers. Her death had raised him from gen­er­al con­tempt. He ap­peared to have grown an inch or two, his back had straight­ened, his voice had deep­ened, a new dig­ni­ty had nar­rowed his plead­ing, greedy eyes. Re­fus­ing to con­sign her to a home, he had cared for her with his own hands. More to the point, in the ear­ly days, when peo­ple still want­ed to see her, he vet­ted her vis­itors. Clive and Ver­non were strict­ly ra­tioned be­cause they were con­sid­ered to make her ex­citable and, af­ter­ward, de­pressed about her con­di­tion. An­oth­er key male, the for­eign sec­re­tary, was al­so un­wel­come. Peo­ple be­gan to mut­ter; there were mut­ed ref­er­ences in a cou­ple of gos­sip columns. And then it no longer mat­tered, be­cause the word was she was hor­ri­bly not her­self; peo­ple didn’t want to go and see her and were glad that George was there to pre­vent them. Clive and Ver­non, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to en­joy loathing him.

→“Brain-​dead and in George’s clutch­es,” Clive said.

→“She would have killed her­self rather than end up like that,” Ver­non Hal­li­day said. He had lived with her for a year in Paris in ’74, when he had his first job with Reuters and Mol­ly did some­thing or oth­er for Vogue.

→He con­tin­ued, “I mean, to die that way, with no aware­ness, like an an­imal. To be re­duced, hu­mil­iat­ed, be­fore she could make ar­range­ments, or even say good­bye. It crept up on her, and then…”

→He watched his own va­por­ized breath float off in­to the gray air. The tem­per­ature in cen­tral Lon­don was said to be twelve de­grees to­day. Twelve. There was some­thing se­ri­ous­ly wrong with the world for which nei­ther God nor His ab­sence could be blamed. Man’s first dis­obe­di­ence, the Fall, a falling fig­ure, an oboe, nine notes, ten notes. Clive had the gift of per­fect pitch and heard them de­scend­ing from the G. There was no need to write them down.

→Clive Lin­ley had known Mol­ly first, back when they were stu­dents in ’68 and lived to­geth­er in a chaot­ic, shift­ing house­hold in the Vale of Health.

→It was the sight now of George emerg­ing from the chapel that caused Mol­ly’s lovers to move off far­ther up the weedy grav­el path. They wan­dered in­to an ar­range­ment of oval rose beds marked by a sign, THE GAR­DEN OF RE­MEM­BRANCE. Each plant had been sav­age­ly cut back to with­in a few inch­es of the frozen ground, a prac­tice Mol­ly used to de­plore. The patch of lawn was strewn with flat­tened cigarette butts, for this was a place where peo­ple came to stand about and wait for the fu­ner­al par­ty ahead of theirs to clear the build­ing. As they strolled up and down, the two old friends re­sumed the con­ver­sa­tion they had had in var­ious forms a half-​dozen times be­fore but that gave them rather more com­fort than singing “Pil­grim.”

→Poor Mol­ly. It be­gan with a tin­gling in her arm as she raised it out­side the Dorch­ester Grill to stop a cab -a sen­sa­tion that nev­er went away. With­in weeks she was fum­bling for the names of things. Par­lia­ment, chem­istry^ pro­peller she could for­give her­self, but less so bed, cream, mir­ror. It was af­ter the tem­po­rary dis­ap­pear­ance of acan­thus and bre­saio­la that she sought med­ical ad­vice, ex­pect­ing re­as­sur­ance. In­stead, she was sent for tests and, in a sense, nev­er re­turned. How quick­ly feisty Mol­ly be­came the sick­room pris­on­er of her mo­rose, pos­ses­sive hus­band, George. Mol­ly, restau­rant crit­ic, gor­geous wit, and pho­tog­ra­pher, the dar­ing gar­den­er, who had been loved by the for­eign sec­re­tary and could still turn a per­fect cartwheel at the age of forty-​six. The speed of her de­scent in­to mad­ness and pain be­came a mat­ter of com­mon gos­sip: the loss of con­trol of bod­ily func­tion and with it all sense of hu­mor, and then the tail­ing off in­to vague­ness in­ter­spersed with episodes of in­ef­fec­tu­al vi­olence and muf­fled shriek­ing.

→“Mmm.”

→“Poor Mol­ly.”

→“Rapid on­set.”

→“When she did it was too late.”

→“She nev­er knew what hit her.”

→Two for­mer lovers of Mol­ly Lane stood wait­ing out­side the cre­ma­to­ri­um chapel with their backs to the Febru­ary chill. It had all been said be­fore, but they said it again.

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