padfoo: переводы

→In the end, the temporary slab was replaced with a mosaic I commissioned from Alexandra. It had a pattern of yellow chrysanthemums and purple irises, Béatrice's favorite combination.

→I sent for the stonemason because I wanted to replace the temporary slab on Béatrice's grave with one made from pink Corsican marble. He was a striking figure, with a small head, gaunt face, bushy red beard, and a sparkling wit. He had been working on gravestones for twenty-eight years. I found his serenity and sense of humor refreshing. I told him about my childhood memories of his fellow stonecutters at the exit of Ajaccio's marine cemetery. Back then, there were about fifty masons competing with one another. Now he was the last one in Corsica. He was proud of it, but he wasn't going to pass on his expertise to his son: "There's no future in stonecutting."

→"Corsica's going to the dogs," Antoine declared mournfully. I followed the conversation from afar. Alexandra was listening, so I could rest in my damn wheelchair in my hat and sunglasses, swathed in a djellaba. I felt dizzy, big drops of sweat rolled out from under the hat. Hélène, Antoine's wife, noticed. I was determined to stay to the end as a mark of respect for my friends from the North. Hélène-a delicate woman with a pretty face resting on a thin, elongated neck-had had a bone marrow transplant a few years before, which had cured her cancer. She had been a brave, compassionate friend to Béatrice at the end of her life. Beautiful and quiet, she observed the world through her deep-set eyes. Meanwhile, her husband analyzed the political situation and enjoyed the local wild boar that Françoise had prepared.

→In the midst of all this, my sister Alexandra had arrived with her son. I stayed in bed, unable even to say hello to them. At two o'clock in the morning, I had another violent attack. I couldn't remember ever having experienced such futile agony, like a woman giving birth to a stillborn child. Béatrice had gritted her teeth in pain and fury with our first child. I screamed my head off. Alexandra moved up to a room at the top of the tower. Laetitia joined her, sobbing. Abdel wouldn't let anyone into my room as he desperately tried to get things moving. An hour later, it had passed, but I was shaking all over, and I couldn't shut my mouth. To Abdel's consternation, I also couldn't speak; as I was too busy concentrating on not biting my tongue. I breathed in short, shallow bursts. It took several hours for my body to calm down. Abdel let me sleep in the next morning. At one o'clock, our Bastia cousins arrived on cue. I asked Abdel to put me in my chair.

→There was only one doctor on weekend duty at the hospital. It was mayhem. The nurses were happy to have a Pozzo though. They told me about the old days, events they'd attended at the chateau. The doctor raised the possibility of an operation, but Abdel countered with a campaign of passive resistance. They decided to put me under observation. Sweat poured off me continually. There was another scare at eight o'clock. Then the doctor sent me back up the mountain by ambulance. Abdel put me to bed. I had a terrible night. The next morning we kept changing our minds about whether to go back. Finally Abdel rang and asked them to send a larger diameter catheter. I was still sweating, but I could stand it for a good half a day.

→Abdel spent the night draining crap out of my bladder with syringes. In the morning, I was covered in sweat, the bed was soaked, and the pain flared up again. I wanted to be with Béatrice, I stopped responding to anything. Abdel called an ambulance. There was no solution. I just had to wait, endure, not rebel, brace myself when there was a moment's respite, and give in when it started again.

→It felt like all the blood vessels in my brain had burst. I couldn't see anything and I couldn't breathe. Abdel struggled with the piping for three hours. Now and then the catheter would clear, my blood pressure would go down from thirty to twelve, and my brain could breathe again. I’d start to think it was all over, and then another tremor would wipe me out.

→Around midnight, I started shaking violently. I told Abdel it was time to pick up sticks, and then withdrew into myself. The pain took hold. I had experienced something like it the year before when Béatrice was still alive, but now I was alone. It was just a stupid, mechanical pain, a bladder outlet obstruction. The catheter was blocked and the urine had been forced back through the kidneys and into the blood. It went up to the brain, and then you exploded. It was idiotic. That was how Béatrice had gone in three days. I held out for five minutes, then gave in and howled like an animal.

→Spaghetti with octopus - the octopus had been caught off the beach that afternoon - and a table wine from the interior of the island in unlabeled bottles. The children chattered away, stuffing themselves, except for young François, who was sulking at being banished to the end of the table. I told him to come and sit between his father and me, which he did, lisping through a big smile. He was the most sensitive of Barbara's children. The others were Marie, with the raunchy language of a sixteen-year-old; Titou, the youngest, with his big, googly eyes; and Josephine, with whom Robert-Jean was in love, just as the rest of us were with her mother. The children got up to get ice-creams and disappeared into the night. How many times had we come here with Béatrice? She and I spent the night here once on our own. She was happy. We were warm, waking up every now and then to the roar of the surf.

→Abdel moved me to the small car. Robert-Jean squeezed in the back to hold me steady on corners. We reached the restaurant, Chez Pierretou, a shack on the vast, beautiful, dangerous stretch of beach. My crack team carried me across the sand and set me down at the head of the table. The children, who had the sea to themselves, swam naked. I let myself sink into a state of torpor, lulled by the surf. It grew dark, and I shrank down in my wheelchair. A few young women smiled and said hello to me. I dozed until the children came and sat around the long table under the palm trees. Cousin Philip took charge.

→Barbara looked up from what she was working on to check on the next generation. All was well. "Don't worry, little cousin, you and Béatrice will be together again." I looked at Abdel playing with the children down on the beach. Laetitia was reveling in the hot sun. Her hair was gleaming black, her skin white. She was a woman now. Barbara's brood gamboled and frolicked. We were all going to meet up later on the huge beach at Capo di Feno.

→I raised my eyes to the horizon. The Sanguinaires islands were silhouetted against the sky. Legend had it that they were named after the plague victims, with their "black blood," who were shipped there during the four centuries of Genoese rule, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Another tradition said it was because the setting sun dyed them blood red. I thought of you, Béatrice. Death carried off those plague sufferers too. They were burnt at the stake, then their ashes were scattered on those parched, sterile islands.

→My friend François had been left paralyzed by a little wave not unlike the ones that afternoon. He had been swimming with his wife and family, his children merrily splashing each other, when a slightly bigger wave had knocked them over. They all got up-roaring with laughter-except François, who stayed face down in the water. They thought he was pretending. When they realized he wasn't breathing, they carried him up onto the beach. He had fractured his first and second cervical vertebrae. Thanks to his faith and his family's love, he held on for seven years without leaving his bed. The doctors couldn't believe it. Then he died.

→For the first time since arriving in Corsica ten days earlier, I decided to tag along with the children when they went to the beach. My cousin Barbara; her husband, Philip; and their six children were at the Pozzo's usual place, a cove the family had been camping alongside for thirty years. Just like Granny twenty years before her, Barbara was doing a tapestry in the shade of an awning while keeping an eye on the troops. I settled in next to her for the afternoon, and found myself remembering the beaches of my childhood.

→The party began on Thursday night. We had dinner and then went through to the great guardroom to listen to the singers from Alata. There was so much grief in their songs: the Arabic tones, the high-pitched keening, and the deep bass voices echoing the vibrations of the mountain and the cries of the buzzards circling and wheeling overhead. I was tired, but I couldn't bring myself to leave the room. They were singing for me, for Béatrice. I had requested "Salve Regina." The voices swelled. I withdrew into myself. Béatrice loved that hymn. They looked at me as they sang, their left hands cupping their ears, their voices echoing around. The emotion exhausted me. When they left, I hadn't really eaten, I hadn't spoken, and all I'd heard was that Corsican polyphony. A shepherd bowed and kissed my hand. Abdel didn't take me to bed until late. I was shivering with fever and didn't sleep much.

→The gist was familiar: God is kind. There is a way to salvation for all those who suffer. But I didn't understand, I was exhausted. I found it hard to fathom those words, which seemed so certain of their meaning.

→"Abdel, will you read me a psalm, please?"

→At seven in the morning, I called to Abdel. He sprang up like a robot; he hadn't slept for three days either. "Abdel, put on some Schubert, please." I was finding it hard to breathe but that didn't matter. I wasn't in pain anymore. Abdel brought me breakfast.

→Lying on my back in the position I'd been in for three days, my eyes closed, something seemed different. I wasn't suffering anymore. I hardly dared believe it: I didn't feel any pain.

→He slid a rod into one of its legs, between the skin and the flesh, and then blew into it as if it were a bagpipe. The animal inflated like a balloon, tripling in size. Once this was done, he asked Françoise to pass him a piece of string to tie up the leg, and then began hitting the animal. The thuds resonated around the tower. He was relentless, like a metronome. After tenderizing the meat, Abdel took his knife and began to cut the animal up. In less than ten minutes, it was stripped down to the bone. Then all that was left was to gut it and collect the offal to cook the vegetables, hence the acrid smell filling my room that evening.