mrs_owl: переводы

→In Sawle, therefore, the curious will find something at once to excite their interest and to frustrate it. A description of a shipwreck and the shadowy outlines of something more. The spectre of human hopes, defeated or fulfilled and now forgotten, the shadows of human conflict and affection, generosity and greed, must stalk sometimes on December nights over the remains of the wreck.

→A voice came from upstairs. It was Patricia calling her. ‘Aunt Madge! Aunt Madge!’

→‘Quite light now,’ she said. ‘You can clear up, Perry. But –’

→He straightened up again.

→‘Anthony,’ Aunt Madge said, as he was about to reseat himself.

→‘There’s the boy. We’ll stay down here together, Madge, if it won’t affect you. We’ll be anxious to know –’

→‘Not if I can help.’

→‘Let him stay here,’ said Perry argumentatively. ‘ He’s company for me. If you’re going I’ll have no company; it’s too late to go to bed now; we can sit here. I’ll light a fire. I’ll get Fanny to light a fire and we’ll sit down here; it’ll help to brighten things up; then when it’s light we’ll go on with clearing away the mess; somebody’ll have to clear the mess; if the boy goes to bed now he’ll sleep till midday. We might need him before then. You don’t want to go to bed, do you, boy?

→The boy got up sleepily and stood beside her. ‘All right.’

→Aunt Madge had risen to her feet again. She looked down upon Perry from an altitude, remote as a snow-covered peak, frozen and impersonal and secretive. ‘How do you think I feel? Ill myself. Husband. Lonely. Got to carry on. Not sit there. Some have got to do. To act. Not sit there over a glass. Where should we be if everyone sat over a glass? Where should we be if I’d done nothing all this night? Anthony …’

→‘It’s the waiting. All of you up there and me down here. Me thinking of poor Joe and doing nothing to help. Not able to do anything; you know, Madge, it isn’t so easy as you think when a brother goes down like this – stricken down in his fifties; when we were kids; it reminds you of that time; we used to go out in a row-boat together; used to fish for dabs; used to bathe up the river; he was a big boy then, or so he seemed to me; there was six years, you know; that’s a difference when you’re kids; now it don’t seem much; those days I never dreamed there’d come a time when I should sit here while Joe lay upstairs; it shakes you up more than you’d think, more than I thought. Blood will tell, you know; blood’s thicker than water; you don’t think so till it comes to the test; at a time like this. Honest to God, Madge, I’d – I’d rather …’

→She kept pausing to wipe her eyes while she sipped it.

→‘You? You’ve done nothing. There’s …’

→Perry slumped back in his chair. ‘I’ve had an awful night …’

→She waved her glass in sudden irritation. ‘Joe’s right: doctors pretend to know. Anthony.… should be in bed.’

→‘What does he say?’ said Perry anxiously.

→Perry put some rum into Anthony’s glass. ‘This’ll do.’

→‘Brandy or something,’ said Aunt Madge. ‘I feel … can’t stand it.’

→The rum was warming the boy. Sleepy in spite of himself, he gazed out across the harbour. There were two lights on the water, that of the setting moon and that of the dawn. The reflection of the moonlight was like tinsel silver, twinkling, without colour, except a suggestion of coffee brown in the water not immediately caught by it. The dawn light was a pure cold blue glimmering on the water like a shield.

→Day was coming. Clouds high in the sky had begun to flush. They reflected a terracotta stain upon the opal blue of the harbour. Seagulls had begun to wheel and cry.