"George, I wish you"d look at the nursery."
"What"s wrong with it?"
"I don"t know."
"Well, then."
"I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to
look at it."
"What would a psychologist want with a nursery?"
"You know very well what he"d want." His wife paused in the middle of
the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for
four.
"It"s just that the nursery is different now than it was."
"All right, let"s have a look."
They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which
had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed
and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them.
Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the nursery light flicked
on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the
halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft
automaticity.
"Well," said George Hadley.
They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet
across by forty feet long and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as
much as the rest of the house. "But nothing"s too good for our children,"
George had said.
The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high
noon. The walls were blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia
Hadley stood in the center of the room, the walls began to purr and recede
into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an African veldt
appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with
a hot yellow sun.
George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.
"Let"s get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I
don"t see anything wrong."
"Wait a moment, you"ll see," said his wife.
Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at
the two people in the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of
lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty
smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air. And
now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery
rustling of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered
on George Hadley"s upturned, sweating face.
"Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say.
"The vultures."
"You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they"re on their
way to the water hole. They"ve just been eating," said Lydia. "I don"t know
what."
"Some animal." George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning
light from his squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."
"Are you sure?" His wife sounded peculiarly tense.
"No, it"s a little late to be sure," be said, amused. "Nothing over
there I can see but cleaned bone, and the vultures dropping for what"s
left."
"Did you bear that scream?" she asked.
"No."
"About a minute ago?"
"Sorry, no."
The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with
admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle
of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one.
Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they
startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone,
not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a
quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly
and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and
your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated
pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an
exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the
sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the
smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible
green-yellow eyes.
"Watch out!" screamed Lydia.
The lions came running at them.
Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside,
in the hall, with the door slammed he was laughing and she was crying, and
they both stood appalled at the other"s reaction.
"George!"
"Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!"
"They almost got us!"
"Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that"s all they are. Oh, they
look real, I must admit - Africa in your parlor - but it"s all dimensional,
superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind
glass screens. It"s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here"s my
handkerchief."
"I"m afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and cried
steadily. "Did you see? Did you feel? It"s too real."
"Now, Lydia..."
"You"ve got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa."
"Of course - of course." He patted her.
"Promise?"
"Sure."
"And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled."
"You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a
month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours - the tantrum be
threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery."
"It"s got to be locked, that"s all there is to it."
"All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You"ve been working
too hard. You need a rest."
"I don"t know - I don"t know," she said, blowing her nose, sitting down
in a chair that immediately began to rock and comfort her. "Maybe I don"t
have enough to do. Maybe I have time to think too much. Why don"t we shut
the whole house off for a few days and take a vacation?"
"You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?"
"Yes." She nodded.
"And dam my socks?"
"Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.
"And sweep the house?"
"Yes, yes - oh, yes!""
"But I thought that"s why we bought this house, so we wouldn"t have to
do anything?"
"That"s just it. I feel like I don"t belong here. The house is wife and
mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a
bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub
bath can? I cannot. And it isn"t just me. It"s you. You"ve been awfully
nervous lately."
"I suppose I have been smoking too much."
"You look as if you didn"t know what to do with yourself in this house,
either. You smoke a little more every morning and drink a little more every
afternoon and need a little more sedative every night. You"re beginning to
feel unnecessary too."
"Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really
there.
"Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. "Those lions
can"t get out of there, can they?"
He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped
against it from the other side.
"Of course not," he said.
At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic
carnival across town and bad televised home to say they"d be late, to go
ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table
produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.
"We forgot the ketchup," he said.
"Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.
As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won"t hurt for the
children to be locked out of it awhile. Too much of anything isn"t good for
anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the children had been spending a
little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his neck,
still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how
the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children"s minds and
created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions, and
there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there were zebras. Sun -
sun. Giraffes - giraffes. Death and death.
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for
him. Death thoughts. They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death
thoughts. Or, no, you were never too young, really. Long before you knew
what death was you were wishing it on someone else. When you were two years
old you were shooting people with cap pistols.
But this - the long, hot African veldt-the awful death in the jaws of a
lion. And repeated again and again.
"Where are you going?"
He didn"t answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly on
ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He
listened against it. Far away, a lion roared.
He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he
heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided
quickly.
He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened
this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his
Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow
jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful contraptions of a
make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,
or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now,
is yellow hot Africa, this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia
was right. Perhaps they needed a little vacation from the fantasy which was
growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all right to
exercise one"s mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind
settled on one pattern... ? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past
month, he had heard lions roaring, and smelled their strong odor seeping as
far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it no attention.
George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up
from their feeding, watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open
door through which he could see his wife, far down the dark hall, like a
framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.
"Go away," he said to the lions.
They did not go.
He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts.
Whatever you thought would appear. "Let"s have Aladdin and his lamp," he
snapped. The veldtland remained; the lions remained.
"Come on, room! I demand Aladin!" he said.
Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.
"Aladin!"
He went back to dinner. "The fool room"s out of order," he said. "It
won"t respond."
"Or--"
"Or what?"
"Or it can"t respond," said Lydia, "because the children have thought
about Africa and lions and killing so many days that the room"s in a rut."
"Could be."
"Or Peter"s set it to remain that way."
"Set it?"
"He may have got into the machinery and fixed something."
"Peter doesn"t know machinery."
"He"s a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -"
"Nevertheless -"
"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad."
The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door,
cheeks like peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles, a smell
of ozone on their jumpers from their trip in the helicopter.
"You"re just in time for supper," said both parents.
"We"re full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs," said the children,
holding hands. "But we"ll sit and watch."
"Yes, come tell us about the nursery," said George Hadley.
The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other.
"Nursery?"
"All about Africa and everything," said the father with false
joviality.
"I don"t understand," said Peter.
"Your mother and I were just traveling through Africa with rod and
reel; Tom Swift and his Electric Lion," said George Hadley.
"There"s no Africa in the nursery," said Peter simply.
"Oh, come now, Peter. We know better."
"I don"t remember any Africa," said Peter to Wendy. "Do you?"
"No."
"Run see and come tell."
She obeyed
"Wendy, come back here!" said George Hadley, but she was gone. The
house lights followed her like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized
he had forgotten to lock the nursery door after his last inspection.
"Wendy"ll look and come tell us," said Peter.
"She doesn"t have to tell me. I"ve seen it."
"I"m sure you"re mistaken, Father."
"I"m not, Peter. Come along now."
But Wendy was back. "It"s not Africa," she said breathlessly.
"We"ll see about this," said George Hadley, and they all walked down
the hall together and opened the nursery door.
There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain,
high voices singing, and Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees
with colorful flights of butterflies, like animated bouquets, lingering in
her long hair. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were gone. Only
Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your
eyes.
George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. "Go to bed," he said to
the children.
They opened their mouths.
"You heard me," he said.
They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown
leaves up the flue to their slumber rooms.
George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something
that lay in the comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back
to his wife.
"What is that?" she asked.
"An old wallet of mine," he said.
He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of
a lion. There were drops of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were
blood smears on both sides.
He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.
In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was
awake. "Do you think Wendy changed it?" she said at last, in the dark room.
"Of course."
"Made it from a veldt into a forest and put Rima there instead of
lions?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don"t know. But it"s staying locked until I find out."
"How did your wallet get there?"
"I don"t know anything," he said, "except that I"m beginning to be
sorry we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all,
a room like that -"
"It"s supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful
way."
"I"m starting to wonder." He stared at the ceiling.
"We"ve given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our
reward-secrecy, disobedience?"
"Who was it said, "Children are carpets, they should be stepped on
occasionally"? We"ve never lifted a hand. They"re insufferable - let"s admit
it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring.
They"re spoiled and we"re spoiled."
"They"ve been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the
rocket to New York a few months ago."
"They"re not old enough to do that alone, I explained."
"Nevertheless, I"ve noticed they"ve been decidedly cool toward us
since."
"I think I"ll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to have a look
at Africa."
"But it"s not Africa now, it"s Green Mansions country and Rima."
"I have a feeling it"ll be Africa again before then."
A moment later they heard the screams.
Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of
lions.
"Wendy and Peter aren"t in their rooms," said his wife.
He lay in his bed with his beating heart. "No," he said. "They"ve
broken into the nursery."
"Those screams - they sound familiar."
"Do they?"
"Yes, awfully."
And although their beds tried very bard, the two adults couldn"t be
rocked to sleep for another hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.
"Father?" said Peter.
"Yes."
Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor
at his mother. "You aren"t going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?"
"That all depends."
"On what?" snapped Peter.
"On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little
variety - oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China -"
"I thought we were free to play as we wished."
"You are, within reasonable bounds."
"What"s wrong with Africa, Father?"
"Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"
"I wouldn"t want the nursery locked up," said Peter coldly. "Ever."
"Matter of fact, we"re thinking of turning the whole house off for
about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence."
"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of
letting the shoe tier do it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and
give myself a bath?"
"It would be fun for a change, don"t you think?"
"No, it would be horrid. I didn"t like it when you took out the picture
painter last month."
"That"s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."
"I don"t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else
is there to do?"
"All right, go play in Africa."
"Will you shut off the house sometime soon?"
"We"re considering it."
"I don"t think you"d better consider it any more, Father."
"I won"t have any threats from my son!"
"Very well." And Peter strolled off to the nursery.
"Am I on time?" said David McClean.
"Breakfast?" asked George Hadley.
"Thanks, had some. What"s the trouble?"
"David, you"re a psychologist."
"I should hope so."
"Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?"
"Can"t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight
paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by
parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing."
They walked down the ball. "I locked the nursery up," explained the
father, "and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them
stay so they could form the patterns for you to see."
There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.
"There it is," said George Hadley. "See what you make of it."
They walked in on the children without rapping.
The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.
"Run outside a moment, children," said George Hadley. "No, don"t change
the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"
With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered
at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
"I wish I knew what it was," said George Hadley. "Sometimes I can
almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -"
David McClean laughed dryly. "Hardly." He turned to study all four
walls. "How long has this been going on?"
"A little over a month."
"It certainly doesn"t feel good."
"I want facts, not feelings."
"My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn"t feel good, I tell you.
Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is
very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your
children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."
"Is it that bad?"
"I"m afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that
we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child"s mind, study at
our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become
a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them."
"Didn"t you sense this before?"
"I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children more than most. And
now you"re letting them down in some way. What way?"
"I wouldn"t let them go to New York."
"What else?"
"I"ve taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month
ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close
it for a few days to show I meant business."
"Ah, ha!"
"Does that mean anything?"
"Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You"ve let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children"s affections. This room is their mother
and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And
now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there"s hatred here.
You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you"ll have to
change your life. Like too many others, you"ve built it around creature
comforts. Why, you"d starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your
kitchen. You wouldn"t know bow to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything
off. Start new. It"ll take time. But we"ll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait and see."
"But won"t the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up
abruptly, for good?"
"I don"t want them going any deeper into this, that"s all."
The lions were finished with their red feast.
The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two
men.
"Now I"m feeling persecuted," said McClean. "Let"s get out of here. I
never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous."
"The lions look real, don"t they?" said George Hadley. I don"t suppose
there"s any way -"
"What?"
"- that they could become real?"
"Not that I know."
"Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?"
"No."
They went to the door.
"I don"t imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.
"Nothing ever likes to die - even a room."
"I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"
"Paranoia is thick around here today," said David McClean. "You can
follow it like a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. "This
yours?"
"No." George Hadley"s face was rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."
They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the
nursery.
The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw
things. They yelled and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.
"You can"t do that to the nursery, you can"t!""
"Now, children."
The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.
"George," said Lydia Hadley, "turn on the nursery, just for a few
moments. You can"t be so abrupt."
"No."
"You can"t be so cruel..."
"Lydia, it"s off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of
here and now. The more I see of the mess we"ve put ourselves in, the more it
sickens me. We"ve been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for
too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!"
And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the
stoves, the heaters, the shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers
and swabbers and massagers, and every other machine be could put his hand
to.
The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical
cemetery. So silent. None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting
to function at the tap of a button.
"Don"t let them do it!" wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was
talking to the house, the nursery. "Don"t let Father kill everything." He
turned to his father. "Oh, I hate you!"
"Insults won"t get you anywhere."
"I wish you were dead!"
"We were, for a long while. Now we"re going to really start living.
Instead of being handled and massaged, we"re going to live."
Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. "Just a moment, just
one moment, just another moment of nursery," they wailed.
"Oh, George," said the wife, "it can"t hurt."
"All right - all right, if they"ll just shut up. One minute, mind you,
and then off forever."
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the children, smiling with wet faces.
"And then we"re going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in
half an hour to help us move out and get to the airport. I"m going to dress.
You turn the nursery on for a minute, Lydia, just a minute, mind you."
And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be
vacuumed upstairs through the air flue and set about dressing himself. A
minute later Lydia appeared.
"I"ll be glad when we get away," she sighed.
"Did you leave them in the nursery?"
"I wanted to dress too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in
it?"
"Well, in five minutes we"ll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we
ever get in this house? What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"
"Pride, money, foolishness."
"I think we"d better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed
with those damned beasts again."
Just then they heard the children calling, "Daddy, Mommy, come quick -
quick!"
They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The
children were nowhere in sight. "Wendy? Peter!"
They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions
waiting, looking at them. "Peter, Wendy?"
The door slammed.
"Wendy, Peter!"
George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.
"Open the door!" cried George Hadley, trying the knob. "Why, they"ve
locked it from the outside! Peter!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"
He heard Peter"s voice outside, against the door.
"Don"t let them switch off the nursery and the house," he was saying.
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. "Now, don"t be ridiculous,
children. It"s time to go. Mr. McClean"ll be here in a minute and..."
And then they heard the sounds.
The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding
through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring in their throats.
The lions.
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the
beasts edging slowly forward crouching, tails stiff.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
And suddenly they realized why those other screams bad sounded
familiar.
"Well, here I am," said David McClean in the nursery doorway, "Oh,
hello." He stared at the two children seated in the center of the open glade
eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them was the water hole and the yellow
veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire. "Where are your
father and mother?"
The children looked up and smiled. "Oh, they"ll be here directly."
"Good, we must get going." At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions
fighting and clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the
shady trees.
He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes.
Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.
A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean"s hot face. Many shadows flickered.
The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky.
"A cup of tea?" asked Wendy in the silence.
Рэй Бредбери. И грянул гром
(звук грома)
Рассказ адаптировала Наталья Федченко
Метод чтения Ильи Франка
Метод чтения Ильи Франка
Каждый текст разбит на небольшие отрывки. Сначала идет адаптированный отрывок - текст с вкрапленным в него дословным русским переводом и небольшим лексическим комментарием. Затем следует тот же текст, но уже неадаптированный, без подсказок.
Конечно, сначала на вас хлынет поток неизвестных слов и форм. Этого не нужно бояться: никто никого по ним не экзаменует. По мере чтения (пусть это произойдет хоть в середине или даже в конце книги) все «утрясется», и вы будете, пожалуй, удивляться: «Ну зачем опять дается перевод, зачем опять приводится исходная форма слова, все ведь и так понятно!» Когда наступает такой момент, «когда и так понятно», стоит уже читать наоборот: сначала неадаптированную часть, а потом заглядывать в адаптированную. (Этот же способ чтения можно рекомендовать и тем, кто осваивает язык не с нуля.)
Язык по своей природе - средство, а не цель, поэтому он лучше всего усваивается не тогда, когда его специально учат, а когда им естественно пользуются - либо в живом общении, либо погрузившись в занимательное чтение. Тогда он учится сам собой, подспудно.
Наша память тесно связана с тем, что мы чувствуем в какой-либо конкретный момент, зависит от нашего внутреннего состояния, от того, насколько мы «разбужены» сейчас (а не от того, например, сколько раз мы повторим какую-нибудь фразу или сколько выполним упражнений).
Для запоминания нужна не сонная, механическая зубрежка или вырабатывание каких-то навыков, а новизна впечатлений. Чем несколько раз повторить слово, лучше повстречать его в разных сочетаниях и в разных смысловых контекстах. Основная масса общеупотребительной лексики при том чтении, которое вам предлагается, запоминается без зубрежки, естественно - за счет повторяемости слов. Поэтому, прочитав текст, не нужно стараться заучить слова из него. «Пока не усвою, не пойду дальше» - этот принцип здесь не подходит. Чем интенсивнее человек будет читать, чем быстрее бежать вперед - тем лучше. В данном случае, как ни странно, чем поверхностнее, чем расслабленнее, тем лучше. И тогда объем материала делает свое дело, количество переходит в качество. Таким образом, все, что требуется от читателя, - это просто почитывать, думая не об иностранном языке, который по каким-либо причинам приходится учить, а о содержании книги.
Если вы действительно будете читать интенсивно, то метод сработает. Главная беда всех изучающих долгие годы один какой-либо язык в том, что они занимаются им понемножку, а не погружаются с головой. Язык - не математика, его надо не учить, к нему надо привыкать. Здесь дело не в логике и не в памяти, а в навыке. Он скорее похож в этом смысле на спорт, которым нужно заниматься в определенном режиме, так как в противном случае не будет результата. Если сразу и много читать, то свободное чтение на новом языке - вопрос трех-четырех месяцев (начиная «с нуля»). А если учить помаленьку, то это только себя мучить и буксовать на месте. Язык в этом смысле похож на ледяную горку - на нее надо быстро взбежать. Пока не взбежите - будете скатываться. Если достигается такой момент, что человек свободно читает, то он уже не потеряет этот навык и не забудет лексику, даже если возобновит чтение на этом языке лишь через несколько лет. А если не доучил - тогда все выветрится.
А что делать с грамматикой? Собственно для понимания текста, снабженного такими подсказками, знание грамматики уже не нужно - и так все будет понятно. А затем происходит привыкание к определенным формам - и грамматика усваивается тоже подспудно. Это похоже на то, как осваивают же язык люди, которые никогда не учили его грамматики, а просто попали в соответствующую языковую среду. Я говорю это не к тому, чтобы вы держались подальше от грамматики (грамматика - очень интересная и полезная вещь), а к тому, что приступать к чтению подобной книги можно и без особых грамматических познаний, достаточно самых элементарных. Данное чтение можно рекомендовать уже на самом начальном этапе.
Такие книги помогут вам преодолеть важный барьер: вы наберете лексику и привыкнете к логике языка, сэкономив много времени и сил.
Ray Bradbury. A Sound of Thunder
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water (вывеска на стене, казалось, дрожала под пленкой скользящей теплой воды) . Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare (почувствовал его веки мигнуть = почувствовал, как его веки мигнули над его взглядом) , and the sign burned in this momentary darkness (и вывеска горела в этой минутной тьме) :
TIME SAFARI (временнóе сафари) , INC. (Incorporated, зарегистрированный как корпорация, т.е. фирма «Сафари во времени»)
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST (сафари /мн. ч./ в любой год в прошлом) .
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL (вы называете животное) .
WE TAKE YOU THERE (мы доставляем вас туда) .
YOU SHOOT IT (вы стреляете в него) .
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels" throat (теплая слизь собралась /накопилась/ в горле Экельса) ; he swallowed and pushed it down (он глотнул и протолкнул ее вниз) . The muscles around his mouth formed a smile (мышцы вокруг его рта образовали улыбку) as he put his hand slowly out upon the air (когда он вытянул руку медленно в воздух) , and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk (и в его руке колыхался чек на десять тысяч долларов для человека за письменным столом) .
"Does this safari guarantee I come back alive (гарантирует ли это сафари, что я вернусь домой живым) ?" "We guarantee nothing (мы ничего не гарантируем) ," said the official (сказал служащий) , "except the dinosaurs (кроме динозавров) ." He turned (он повернулся) . "This is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past (это мистер Тревис, ваш проводник в Прошлое) . He"ll tell you what and where to shoot (он скажет вам, что и где стрелять) . If he says no shooting, no shooting (если он скажет не стрелять, не стрелять) . If you disobey instructions, there"s a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars (если вы ослушаетесь инструкций, существует жесткий штраф еще на десять тысяч долларов) , plus possible government action, on your return (плюс возможные действия правительства после вашего возвращения) ."
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels" throat; he swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air, and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk.
"Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?"
"We guarantee nothing," said the official, "except the dinosaurs." He turned. "This is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He"ll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting. If you disobey instructions, there"s a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars, plus possible government action, on your return."
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle (взглянул через просторный офис «на кучу и путаницу» = на кучу чего-то спутанного) , a snaking and humming of wires and steel boxes (/на/ извивание и жужжание проводов и стальные коробки: snake - змея) , at an aurora (на сияние: aurora - заря) that flickered now orange, now silver, now blue (которое вспыхивало то оранжевым, то серебряным, то синим) . There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time (то был звук, похожий на гигантский костер, сжигающий полностью Время) , all the years and all the parchment calendars (все годы и все пергаментные календари /летописи/) , all the hours piled high and set aflame (все часы, сваленные высоко в кучу и подожженные) .
A touch of the hand and this burning would (прикосновение руки и это горение бы) , on the instant (мгновенно) , beautifully reverse itself (прекрасно повернулось вспять) . Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter (помнил формулировку в объявлении /с точностью/ до буквы) . Out of chars and ashes (из пепла и золы) , out of dust and coals (из пыли и углей) , like golden salamanders (как золотистые саламандры) , the old years, the green years (старые годы, зеленые = молодые годы) , might leap (могли бы выскочить = подняться) ; roses sweeten the air (розы услаждают воздух) , white hair turn Irish-black (белые /седые/ волосы становятся черными, как у ирландцев) , wrinkles vanish (морщины исчезают) ; all, everything fly back to seed (всё и все возвращаются /«летят»/обратно в семя) , flee death (убегают от смерти) , rush down to their beginnings (бросаются к своим истокам) , suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts (солнца восходят на западных небесах и садятся на великолепных востоках) , moons eat themselves opposite to the custom (луны съедают себя вопреки обычаю = убывают с другого конца) , all and everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes (все и всё складывающееся одно в другое как китайские коробочки /по принципу матрешки/) , rabbits into hats (/как/ кролики в шляпы) , all and everything returning to the fresh death (все и всё, возвращающееся к свежей /новой/ смерти) , the seed death (смерти семени) , the green death (зеленой смерти) , to the time before the beginning (ко времени до начала = к началу начал) . A touch of a hand might do it (прикосновение руки могло бы сделать это) , the merest touch of a hand (простейшее прикосновение руки) .
You are a child in a small town. You are, to be exact, eight years old, and it is growing late at night. Late for you, accustomed to bedding in at nine or nine-thirty: once in a while perhaps begging Mom or Dad to let you stay up later to hear Sam and Henry on that strange radio that is popular in this year of 1927. But most of the time you are in bed and snug at this time of night.
It is a warm summer evening. You live in a small house on a small street in the outer part of town where there are few street lights. There is only one store open, about a block away: Mrs Singer’s. In the hot evening Mother has been ironing the Monday wash and you have been intermittently begging for ice cream and staring into the dark.
You and your mother are all alone at home in the warm darkness of summer. Finally, just before it is time for Mrs Singer to close her store, Mother relents and tells you:
‘Run get a pint of ice cream and be sure she packs it tight.’
You ask if you can get a scoop of chocolate ice cream on top, because you don’t like vanilla, and Mother agrees. You clutch the money and run barefooted over the warm evening cement sidewalk, under the apple trees and oak trees, toward the store. The town is so quiet and far off, you can only hear the crickets sounding in the spaces beyond the hot indigo trees that hold back the stars.
Your bare feet slap the pavement, you cross the street and find Mrs Singer moving ponderously about her store, singing Yiddish melodies.
‘Pint ice cream?’ she says. ‘Chocolate on top? Yes!’
You watch her fumble the metal top off the ice-cream freezer and manipulate the scoop, packing the cardboard pint chock full with ‘chocolate on top, yes!’ You give the money, receive the chill, icy pack, and rubbing it across your brow and cheek, laughing, you thump barefootedly homeward. Behind you, the lights of the lonely little store blink out and there is only a street light shimmering on the corner, and the whole city seems to be going to sleep…
Opening the screen door you find Mom still ironing. She looks hot and irritated, but she smiles just the same.
‘When will Dad be home from lodge-meeting?’ you ask.
‘About eleven-thirty or twelve,’ Mother replies. She takes the ice cream to the kitchen, divides it. Giving you your special portion of chocolate, she dishes out some for herself and the rest is put away. ‘For Skipper and your father when they come.’
Skipper is your brother. He is your older brother. He’s twelve and healthy, red-faced, hawk-nosed, tawny-haired, broad-shouldered for his years, and always running. He is allowed to stay up later than you. Not much later, but enough to make him feel it is worthwhile having been born first. He is over on the other side of town this evening to a game of kick-the-can and will be home soon. He and the kids have been yelling, kicking, running for hours, having fun. Soon he will come clomping in, smelling of sweat and green grass on his knees where he fell, and smelling very much in all ways like Skipper; which is natural.
You sit enjoying the ice cream. You are at the core of the deep quiet summer night. Your mother and yourself and the night all around this small house on this small street. You lick each spoon of ice cream thoroughly before digging for another, and Mom puts her ironing board away and the hot iron in its case, and she sits in the armchair by the phonograph, eating her dessert and saying, ‘My lands, it was a hot day today. It’s still hot. Earth soaks up all the heat and lets it out at night. It’ll be soggy sleeping.’
You both sit there listening to the summer silence. The dark is pressed down by every window and door, there is no sound because the radio needs a new battery, and you have played all the Knickerbocker Quartet records and Al Jolson and Two Black Crows records to exhaustion: so you just sit on the hardwood floor by the door and look out into the dark dark dark, pressing your nose against the screen until the flesh of its tip is molded into small dark squares.
‘I wonder where your brother is?’ Mother says after a while. Her spoon scrapes on the dish. ‘He should be home by now. It’s almost nine-thirty.’
‘He’ll be here,’ you say, knowing very well that he will be.
You follow Mom out to wash the dishes. Each sound, each rattle of spoon or dish is amplified in the baked evening. Silently, you go to the living room, remove the couch cushions and, together, yank it open and extend it down into the double bed that it secretly is. Mother makes the bed, punching pillows neatly to flump them up for your head. Then, as you are unbuttoning your shirt, she says:
‘Wait awhile, Doug.’
‘Because. I say so.’
‘You look funny, Mom.’
Mom sits down a moment, then stands up, goes to the door, and calls. You listen to her calling and calling Skipper. Skipper, Skiiiiiiiiiperrrrrrrr over and over. Her calling goes out into the summer warm dark and never comes back. The echoes pay no attention.
Skipper, Skipper, Skipper.
And as you sit on the floor a coldness that is not ice cream and not winter, and not part of summer’s heat, goes through you. You notice Mom’s eyes sliding, blinking; the way she stands undecided and is nervous. All of these things.
She opens the screen door. Stepping out into the night she walks down the steps and down the front sidewalk under the lilac bush. You listen to her moving feet.
She calls again. Silence.
She calls twice more. You sit in the room. Any moment now Skipper will reply, from down the long long narrow street:
‘All right, Mom! All right, Mother! Hey!’
But he doesn’t answer. And for two minutes you sit looking at the made-up bed, the silent radio, the silent phonograph, at the chandelier with its crystal bobbins gleaming quietly, at the rug with the scarlet and purple curlicues on it. You stub your toe on the bed purposely to see if it hurts. It does.
Whining, the screen door opens, and Mother says:
‘Come on, Shorts. We’ll take a walk.’
‘Where to?’
‘Just down the block. Come on. Better put your shoes on, though. You’ll catch cold.’
‘No, I won’t. I’ll be all right.’
You take her hand. Together you walk down St James Street. You smell roses in blossom, fallen apples lying crushed and odorous in the deep grass. Underfoot, the concrete is still warm, and the crickets are sounding louder against the darkening dark. You reach a corner, turn, and walk toward the ravine.
Off somewhere, a car goes by, flashing its lights in the distance. There is such a complete lack of life, light, and activity. Here and there, back off from where you are walking toward the ravine, you see faint squares of light where people are still up. But most of the houses, darkened, are sleeping already, and there are a few lightless places where the occupants of a dwelling sit talking low dark talk on their front porches. You hear a porch swing squeaking as you walk near.
‘I wish your father was home,’ says Mother. Her large hand tightens around your small one. ‘Just wait’ll I get that boy. I’ll spank him within an inch of his life.’
A razor strop hangs in the kitchen for this. You think of it, remember when Dad has doubled and flourished it with muscled control over your frantic limbs. You doubt Mother will carry out her promise.
Now you have walked another block and are standing by the holy black silhouette of the German Baptist Church at the corner of Chapel Street and Glen Rock. In back of the church a hundred yards away, the ravine begins. You can smell it. It has a dark sewer, rotten foliage, thick green odor. It is a wide ravine that cuts and twists across the town, a jungle by day, a place to let alone at night, Mother has often declared.
You should feel encouraged by the nearness of the German Baptist Church, but you are not-because th
e building is not illumined, is cold and useless as a pile of ruins on the ravine edge.
You are only eight years old, you know little of death, fear, or dread. Death is the waxen effigy in the coffin when you were six and Grandfather passed away-looking like a great fallen vulture in his casket, silent, withdrawn, no more to tell you how to be a good boy, no more to comment succinctly on politics. Death is your little sister one morning when you awaken at the age of seven, look into her crib and see her staring up at you with a blind blue, fixed and frozen stare until the men come with a small wicker basket to take her away. Death is when you stand by her high chair four weeks later and suddenly realize she’ll never be in it again, laughing and crying, and make you jealous of her because she was born. That is death.
But this is more than death. This summer night wading deep in time and stars and warm eternity. It is an essence of all the things you will ever feel or see or hear in your life again, being brought steadily home to you all at once.
Leaving the sidewalk, you walk along a trodden, pebbled, weed-fringed path to the ravine’s edge. Crickets, in loud full drumming chorus now, are shouting to quiver the dead. You follow obediently behind brave, fine, tall Mother who is defender of all the universe. You feel braveness because she goes before, and you hang back a trifle for a moment, and then hurry on, too. Together, then, you approach, reach, and pause at the very edge of civilization.
Here and now, down there in that pit of jungled blackness is suddenly all the evil you will ever know. Evil you will never understand. All of the nameless things are there. Later, when you have grown you’ll be given names to label them with. Meaningless syllables to describe the waiting nothingness. Down there in the huddled shadow, among thick trees and trailed vines, lives the odor of decay. Here, at this spot, civilization ceases, reason ends, and a universal evil takes over.
You realize you are alone. You and your mother. Her hand trembles.
Her hand trembles.
Your belief in your private world is shattered. You feel Mother tremble. Why? Is she, too, doubtful? But she is bigger, stronger, more intelligent than yourself, isn’t she? Does she, too, feel that intangible menace, that groping out of darkness, that crouching malignancy down below? Is there, then, no strength in growing up? no solace in being an adult? no sanctuary in life? no flesh citadel strong enough to withstand the scrabbling assault of midnights? Doubts flush you. Ice cream lives again in your throat, stomach, spine and limbs; you are instantly cold as a wind out of December-gone.
You realize that all men are like this. That each person is to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid. Like here, standing. If you should scream now, if you should holler for help, would it matter?
You are so close to the ravine now that in the instant of your scream, in the interval between someone hearing it and running to find you, much could happen.
Blackness could come swiftly, swallowing; and in one titanically freezing moment all would be concluded. Long before dawn, long before police with flashlights might probe the disturbed pathway, long before men with trembling brains could rustle down the pebbles to your help. Even if they were within five hundred yards of you now, and help certainly is, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all eight years of life away from you and-
The essential impact of life’s loneliness crushes your beginning-to-tremble body. Mother is alone, too. She cannot look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her family’s love, she cannot look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she cannot look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there she’ll find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this instant it is an individual problem seeking an individual solution. You must accept being alone and work on from there.
You swallow hard, cling to her. Oh Lord, don’t let her die, please, you think. Don’t do anything to us. Father will be coming home from lodgemeeting in an hour and if the house is empty…?
Mother advances down the path into the primeval jungle. Your voice trembles. ‘Mom. Skip’s all right. Skip’s all right. He’s all right. Skip’s all right.’
Mother’s voice is strained, high. ‘He always comes through here. I tell him not to, but those darned kids, they come through here anyway. Some night he’ll come through and never come out again-’
Never come out again. That could mean anything. Tramps. Criminals. Darkness. Accident. Most of all-death.
Alone in the universe.
There are a million small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key violins is the small towns’ music, with no lights but many shadows. Oh the vast swelling loneliness of them. The secret damp ravines of them. Life is a horror lived in them at night, when at all sides sanity, marriage, children, happiness, are threatened by an ogre called Death.
Mother raises her voice into the dark.
‘Skip! Skipper!’ she calls. ‘Skip! Skipper!’
Suddenly, both of you realize there is something wrong. Something very wrong. You listen intently and realize what it is.
The crickets have stopped chirping.
Silence is complete.
Never in your life a silence like this one. One so utterly complete. Why should the crickets cease? Why? What reason? They have never stopped ever before. Not ever.
Unless, Unless-
Something is going to happen.
It is as if the whole ravine is tensing, bunching together its black fibers, drawing in power from all about sleeping countrysides, for miles and miles. From dew-sodden forests and dells and rolling hills where dogs tilt heads to moons, from all around the great silence is sucked into one center, and you at the core of it. In ten seconds now, something will happen, something will happen. The crickets keep their truce, the stars are so low you can almost brush the tinsel. There are swarms of them, hot and sharp.
Growing, growing, the silence. Growing, growing, the tenseness. Oh it’s so dark, so far away from everything. Oh God!
And then, way way off across the ravine:
‘Okay, Mom! Coming, Mother!’
‘Hi, Mom! Coming, Mom!’
And then the quick scuttering of tennis shoes padding down through the pit of the ravine as three kids come dashing, giggling. Your brother Skipper, Chuck Redman, and Augie Bartz. Running, giggling.
The stars suck up like the stung antennae of ten million snails.
The crickets sing!
The darkness pulls back, startled, shocked, angry. Pulls back, losing its appetite at being so rudely interrupted as it prepared to feed. As the dark retreats like a wave on a shore, three kids pile out of it, laughing.
‘Hi, Mom! Hi, Shorts! Hey!’
It smells like Skipper all right. Sweat and grass and his oiled leather baseball glove.
‘Young man, you’re going to get a licking,’,declares Mother. She puts away her fear instantly. You know she will never tell anybody of it, ever. It will be in her heart though, for all time, as it is in your heart, for all time.
You walk home to bed in the late summer night. You are glad Skipper is alive. Very glad. For a moment there you thought-
Far off in the dim moonlit country, over a viaduct and down a valley, a train goes rushing along and it whistles like a lost metal thing, nameless and running. You go to bed, shivering, beside your brother, listening to that train whistle, and thinking of a cousin who lived way out in the country where that train is now; a cousin who died of pneumonia late at night years and years ago…You smell the sweat of Skip beside you. It is magic. You stop trembling. You hear footsteps outside the house on the sidewalk, as Mother is turning out the lights. A man clears his throat in a way you recognize.
Mom says, ‘That’s your father.’
‘Here they come,’ said Cecy, lying there
flat in her bed.
‘Where are they?’ cried Timothy from the doorway.
‘Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!’ said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, brown, and quivering.
Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings of the upstairs room. ‘Who are they?’
‘Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there’s Cousin William, and I see Frulda and Helgar and Aunt Morgiana and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! They’re all coming fast!’
‘Are they up in the sky?’ cried Timothy, his little gray eyes flashing. Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his fourteen years. The wind blew outside, the house was dark and lit only by starlight.
‘They’re coming through the air and traveling along the ground, in many forms,’ said Cecy, in her sleeping. She did not move on the bed: she thought inward on herself and told what she saw. ‘I see a wolflike thing coming over a dark river-at the shallows-just above a waterfall, the starlight shining up his pelt. I see a brown oak leaf blowing far up in the sky. I see a small bat flying. I see many other things, running through the forest trees and slipping through the highest branches: and they’re all coming this way!’
‘Will they be here by tomorrow night?’ Timothy clutched the bedclothes. The spider on his lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned over his sister. ‘Will they all be here in time for the Homecoming?’
‘Yes, yes, Timothy, yes,’ sighed Cecy. She stiffened. ‘Ask no more of me. Go away now. Let me travel in the places I like best.’
‘Thanks, Cecy,’ he said. Out in the hall, he ran to his room. He hurriedly made his bed. He had just awakened a few minutes ago, at sunset, and as the first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement about the party run with Cecy. Now she slept so quietly there was not a sound. The spider hung on a silvery lasso about Timothy’s slender neck as he washed his face. ‘Just think. Spid, tomorrow night is Allhallows Eve!’
He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror allowed in the house. It was his mother’s concession to his illness. Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate teeth nature had given him. No more than so many corn kernels-round, soft and pale in his jaws. Some of the high spirit died in him.
В представленной адаптации были собраны одиннадцать коротеньких рассказов всемирно известного американского сочинителя-фантаста Рэя Брэдбери, которые написались ним в различные годы ХХ века. Видение будущего в рассказах маэстро-сочинителя не всегда является безоблачным – особенно это читается в таких рассказах, как: The Pedestrian, All summer in a day, The Veldt. Фантастическое окружение способствует созданию текста на грани притчи (Death and the maiden), а также психологического изыскания (The best of all possible worlds, A scent of sarsaparilla). Неподражаемая авторская речь и тончайший юмор качественно дополняют сочинения Брэдбери, которые отлично знают и чтят во всем мире. Малообъемные рассказы, около четырех с небольшим тысяч знаков, могут использоваться для домашнего чтения и обговаривания на уроках. По доброй традиции в книжку помещены постраничное комментирование, словарик сложной лексики и удачно подобранные упражнения. Уровень адаптации – Pre-Intermediate.
Сегодня читаем короткие рассказы на английском языке . Рассказ Рэя Брэдбери «Крик из-под земли» (Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman) относится к уровню СРЕДНИЙ. Этот рассказ очень интересный с неожиданным концом. Прилагаются слова для изучения и комментарии. К сайту подключен словарь и если вы не знаете слово, то кликните по нему 2 раза кнопкой мыши и выберите подходящий перевод. Изучайте английский язык с нами. Удачи!
Слова, которые вы будете знать, если прочитаете эту историю:
- scream – 1. крик; 2. кричать
- pay no attention to smb – не уделять внимания кому-то .
- the bombed site – пустырь
- broken glass – битое стекло
- dirt – грязь
- rocks – камни
- rubbish – мусор
- stuff – дрянь, хлам
- hole – яма
- ground – земля
- bury – захоронить
- dig out (excavate) – выкапывать
- fill – наполнить
- shed – сарай
- spade – лопата
- shovel – совок
- choke – задыхаться
- suffocate – умереть от недостатка воздуха
- keep screaming – продолжать кричать
- cry for help – звать на помощь
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 1 (Часть 1)
Грамматический комментарий к первой части:
- like – зд. как (предлог) – второе значение; like – нравиться (глагол) – первое значение
ПРИМЕРЫ
like ours – как наша
like burying people – как закапывать людей
- go on – продолжать что-то делать
ПРИМЕР go on buttering your toast – продолжать намазывать хлеб маслом
My name is Margaret Leary and I’m ten years old. I haven’t any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got a nice father and mother but they don’t pay much attention to me. And anyway, we never thought, we would have anything to do with a murdered woman. Or almost, anyway.
<…> we would have anything to do with a murdered woman. — <…> нам приедется иметь дело с убитой женщиной.
When you are living in a road like ours , you don’t think about awful things that are going to happen, like burying people under the ground , practically in your back garden. And when it does happen, you don’t believe it. You just go on buttering your toast or baking a cake.
I’ll tell you how it happened. It was in the middle of July. It was hot and Mother said to me: “Margaret, you go to the shop and buy some ice-cream. It’s Saturday. Dad’s home for lunch, so we’ll have a treat.”
I ran across the bombed site behind our house. It was a place where kids played and there was broken glass and stuff.
On my way back from the shop with the ice-cream I was just walking along, when all of a sudden it happened.
I heard the Screaming Woman. I stopped and listened. It was coming from out of the ground. A woman was buried under the rocks and dirt and glass, and was screaming, all wild and horrible, for someone to dig her out.
I just stood there, afraid, and she kept screaming . Then I started to run. I fell down, got up again and ran some more.
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 2 (Часть 2)
Грамматический комментарий ко второй части:
We’ve got to – Нам придется (оборот аналогичный have to — приходится)ПРИМЕР. We have got to dig her out. — Нам придется ее выкопать.
I opened the door of our house and there was Mother, calm and not knowing what I knew, that there was a real live woman buried
at the back of our house, just a hundred yards away, crying for help.
«Don’t just stand there with the ice-cream melting,» said Mother.
«But, Mum» I said.
«Put it in the fridge,» she said.
«Listen, Mum, there’s a Screaming Woman…»
«And wash your hands,» said Mother.
«She was screaming and screaming …Listen to me,» I said, loudly. «We’ve got to
dig
her out. She‘s
buried
under tons and tons of dirt
and if we don’t dig her out
, she’ll choke
and die.»
«I’m certain she can wait until after lunch,» said Mother.
«Mum, don’t you believe me?»
«Of course, dear. Now wash your hands and take this plate in to your father.»
«I don’t even know who she is or how she got there,» I said. «But we’ve got to help
her before it’s too late.»
«Good heavens.» said Mother. «Look at this ice-cream. What did you do, just stand in the sun and let it melt?»
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 3 (Часть 3)
- I don’t feel like an archaeologist – У меня нет желаний быть археологом сейчас
- It took me – зд. Мне потребовалось; (It takes – требуется)
- feel like a real meanie – чувствовать себя настоящим злодеем
- free of charge – бесплатно (устойч. выражение)
I went into the dining-room.
«Dad, there’s a Screaming Woman in the bombed site.
»
«You look very unhappy,» said Father.»We’ve got to
get spades and shovels
and excavate
» I said.
«I don’t feel like an archaeologist
, Margaret,» said Father. «It’s too hot now. Some nice cool October day, we’ll do it, I promise.»
«But we can’t wait that long,» I almost screamed. I was excited and scared and here was Dad, putting meat on his plate and paying me no attention.
«Dad?» I said.
«Mm?»
«Dad, you’ve just got to come out after lunch and help me,» I said. «Dad, Dad, I’ll give you all the money in my piggy bank!»
«Well,» said Dad. «So, it’s a business, isn’t it? It must be important for you if you give me your money. How much money will you pay by the hour?»
«I’ve got ten shillings. It took me a year to save, and it’s all yours.»
Dad touched my arm.
«Oh, you want me to play with you and pay for my time. Margaret, your old Dad feel like a real meanie
. I don’t pay much attention to you, I think. Tell you what, after lunch I’ll come out and listen to your screaming woman, free of charge.
»
«Will you, oh, will you, really?»
«Yes,» said Dad. «But you must promise me one thing.»
«What?»
«If I come out, you must eat all of your lunch first.»
«I promise,» I said.
Mother came in and sat down and we started to eat.
«Not so fast,» she said. I slowed down. Then I started eating fast again.
«You heard your mother,» said Dad.
«The Screaming Woman,» I said. «We must hurry.»
«I,» said Father, «will sit here quietly and give my attention first to my steak, then to my ice-cream, and then to my beer. And another thing, young lady, if you say her name, this screaming woman, once more at this table during lunch, I won’t go out with you to hear her.»
«Yes, sir.»
«Is that understood?»
«Yes, sir,» I said.
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 4 (Часть 4)
- nearly married – чуть не женился
- I feel sorrу for her – Мне жаль ее
- a terrible brute – ужасное чудовище
- had the lead in our school play – играла ведущую роль в пьесе
- either – тоже (в отличие от too упоотребляется в отрицат. предл.)
Грамматический комментарий к третьей части:
I had to – Мне пришлось (констр. have to — приходится в прош. времени)
Lunch was a million years long. Everybody moved very slowly, like
in those films you see sometimes. Mother got up slowly and sat down slowly, and forks and knives and spoons moved slowly. Even the flies in the room were slow. It was all so slow I wanted to scream, «Hurry! Oh, please, get up, run around, come on, run!»
But no, I had to
sit and wait while father and mother were eating their lunch. And the Screaming Woman was all alone.
«The lunch was very good,» said Dad, when he finished at last.
«Now will you come out to see the Screaming Woman?» I said.
«First a little more iced beer,» said Dad.
«Speaking of screaming women,» said Mother, «Charlie Nesbitt and his wife Helen were fighting again last night.»
«That’s nothing new,» said Father. «They’re always fighting.»
«If you ask me, I don’t like Charlie,» said Mother, «and her, either
.»
«Well, I don’t know,» said Dad. «I think she’s quite nice.»
«Oh, I see. After all, you nearly
married her.»
«That’s all in the past.» he said.
«I feel sorrу for
Helen. She was sweet. Sweet and kind. But now she is very unhappy. Her husband is a terrible brute
»
«Dad,» I said.
«Yes, Charlie often gets very angry.» said Dad. «Remember when Helen had the lead in our school play
? Pretty as a picture. She wrote some songs for it herself. That was the time she wrote that song for me.»
«Ha,» said Mother.
«Don’t laugh. It was a good song.»
«You never told me about that song.»
«It was between Helen and me. Let me sing it to you.»
«Dad,» I said.
«You promised your daughter to go with her to the bombed site
,» said Mother, «You can sing me that wonderful song later.»
«O.K, come on,» said Dad, and I ran him out of the house.
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 5 (Часть 5)
- put a damp cloth on your forehead – положить мокрое полотенце на лоб
- I don’t hear anything – я ничего не слышу
- I heard her screaming – Я слышала, как она кричала.
- lie – 1. лежать 2. лгать (2 значения)
The bombed site
was still empty and hot.
«Now, where’s this Screaming Woman?» laughed Dad.
«We forgot the spades
,» I cried.
«We’ll get them later, after we hear her,» said Dad.
«Listen,» I said. We listened.
«I don’t hear anything,
» said Dad, at last.
«Shh,» I said. «Wait.»
We listened some more. «Hullo there, Screaming Woman!» I cried.
We heard the sun in the sky. We heard the wind in the trees, really quiet. We heard a train, far away. That was all.
«Margaret,» said Father, «You must go home, lie
on your bed and put a damp cloth on your forehead.»
«But she was here,» I shouted, «I heard her screaming
and screaming and screaming. See here.» I called: «Hey, you down there!»
«Margaret,» said Father, «this is the place where Mr. Kelly dug
a big hole
yesterday, to bury
his rubbish
in.»
«You won’t help me dig
?»
“I’m going back home. Don’t be here too long,» said Dad. Dad went away. I heard the back door shut.
* * *
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 6 (Часть 6)
Используем языковую догадку:
Скорее всего, вы уже запомнили подчеркнутые
слова. Теперь попробуйте, читая текст, догадаться о значении слов, выделенных курсивом (ниже перевод некоторых из них)
:
Damn!
— Черт побери!
rest
— отдыхать
perhaps
— возможно
Jiminy cricket!
—
Быть того не может!
voice
— голос
shook his head
—
покачал головой
arms folded
—
сложив руки
He’s the one.
-Это он.
There’s only one thing to do.
— Единственное, что остается сделать.
I
stamped
on the ground
. «Damn!
,» I said.
The screaming started again. She screamed and screamed. Maybe she had been tired and was resting
and now began it all over again.
I stood on the bombed site
in the hot sun and I
felt like crying.
I ran back to the house and banged
the door.
«Dad, she’s screaming again!»
«Yes, yes, of course she is,» said Dad.
I began to cry but Dad paid no attention
.
I ran to the shed
, got spades
and I ran to the bombed site.
It was hotter than ever. And I started to dig
, and while I dug
, the Screaming Woman screamed …
It was hard work. And I knew I would be doing it all afternoon and perhaps
I wouldn’t finish in time. What could I do? Run and tell other people? But they’d be like
Mum and Dad, pay no attention.
I just kept digging
, all by myself.
About ten minutes later, Dippy Smith came across the bombed site.
He’s my age and goes to my school.
«Hullo, Margaret,» he said.
«Hullo, Dippy!»
«What’re you doing?» he asked.
«Digging.»
«What for?»
«I’ve got a Screaming Lady in the ground
and I’m digging for her,» I said.
«I don’t hear any screaming,» said Dippy.
«You sit down and wait a while and you’ll hear her scream. Or better, help me dig
.»
«I won’t dig
unless I hear a scream,» he said.
He waited. «Listen,» I cried. «Did you HEAR it?»
A scream came out of the ground.
«Jiminy cricket!»
said Dippy. «Teach me to do it!»
«If you help dig,
I’ll tell you about it, later,» I lied,
because I wanted him to help.
«Fine,» he said. «Give me a spade
.»
We both dug
together, and from time to time the woman screamed.
«Oh,» said Dippy, «I’m tired. I think I’ll go home and have a rest
.»
«You can’t do that.»
«Who says so?»
«Dippy, there’s something I want to tell you.»
«What?»
I
whispered
in his ear, «There’s really a woman buried
here.»
«Why, of course there is,» he said. «You told me, Maggie.»
«You don’t believe me, either
.»
«Tell me how you do it your voice
and I’ll keep on digging.»
«But I can’t tell you, because I’m not doing it,» I said. «Look, Dippy, I’ll stand over here and you listen there.”
The Screaming Woman screamed again.
«NO!» said Dippy. «But there really IS a woman!»
«That’s what I tried to say.»
«Let’s dig
!» said Dippy. We dug
for twenty minutes.
«I wonder who she is?»
«I don’t know.»
Just then heard a voice
:
«Now, you kids, what do you think you’re doing?»
We turned. It was Mr. Kelly.
«Oh, hullo, Mr. Kelly,» we said.
«Tell you what I want you to do,» said Mr. Kelly «I want you to take, those spades
and take that soil
and put it all back in that hole
you’ve been dig
ging. That’s what I want you to do.»
My heart started beating
fast again. I wanted toscream myself.
«But Mr. Kelly, there’s a Screaming Woman and …»
«I’m not interested. I can’t hear a thing.»
«Listen!» I cried. The scream.
Mr. Kelly listened and shook his head
. «Can`t hearanything. Go on now, fill
it up!»
We filled the hole
all back in again. And all the time we filled
it in, Mr. Kelly stood there, arms folded
, and the woman screamed but Mr. Kelly pretended
not to hear it.
When we were finished, Mr. Kelly said, «Go on home now. And if I catch you hereagain …»
I turned to Dippy. «He’s the one
,» I whispered.
«What?» said Dippy.
«He murdered Mrs. Kelly. He buried
her here in a box. Why he stood right here and she screamed and he wouldn’t pay any attention
.» ‘
«Yes,» said Dippy, «that’s right. He stood right here and lied
to us.»
«There’s only one thing to do
,
» I said. «Call the police and they come and arrest Mr. Kelly.”
We ran for the corner telephone box.
Ray Bradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 7 (Часть 7)
- in the bushes – в кустах
- I beg your pardon. – Прошу прощения.
- Sorry to have troubled you. – Извините, что побеспокоили Вас.
- blasted kids – проклятые дети
- W e’re really in trouble. – У нас неприятности.
- his strap – ремень
- sort of deaf – вроде как глухой
- There was only one last thing to do. – Оставалось последнее.
- Is anyone missing from your house? – Никто не пропал из вашего дома?
- I was just about to give up. – Я готова была сдаться.
The police knocked
on Mr. Kelly’s door five minutes later. Dippy and I were hiding in the bushes
listening.
«Mr. Kelly?» said the police officer.
«Yes, sir, what can I do for you?»
«Is Mrs. Kelly at home?»
«Yes, sir.»
«May we see her, sir?»
«Of course. Hey, Anna!»
Mrs. Kelly came to the door and looked out. «Yes, sir?»
«I beg your pardon
,» said the officer. «We had a report that you were buried
out in the bombed site
, Mrs. Kelly. Sorry to have troubled you
.»
«It’s those blasted kids
,» cried Mr. Kelly angrily.
We both ran.
«What shall we do now?» I said.
«I’ve got to go home,» said Dippy. «Gosh, we’re really in trouble
.»
«But what about the Screaming Woman?»
«Forget about her,» said Dippy. «We can’t go there again.
Old man Kelly will be waiting around with his strap
. And I just remembered, Maggie, old man Kelly is sort of deaf
”
«Oh, my
,» I said. «No wonder
he didn’t hear the screams.»
«So long,» said Dippy. «I’ll be seeing you.»
I was left all alone in the world, no one to help me, no one to believe me at all. There was only one last thing to do
, and I did it.
I went from house to house, all down the road. And I rang every bell and when the door opened I said: «Excuse me, Mrs. Griswold, but is anyone missing from your house
?»
It was getting late. I kept thinking, oh, there’s only so little air in that box with that woman under the earth, and if I don’t hurry, she’ll suffocate
! So I rang bells and knocked on doors, and it got late, and I was just about to give up
and go home, when I knocked on the last door, which was the door of Mr. Charlie Nesbitt, who lives next to us. I kept knocking and knocking.
RayBradbury. The Screaming Woman. Рart 8 (Часть 8, последняя)
- be calm – быть спокойной
- be casual – казаться небрежным
- It was all over. – Все было кончено.
- hardly – едва
- – «Я любила тебя, наша любовь была прекрасна.»
- «Last one there’s a monkey .» – Кто быстрее?
Mr. Nesbitt opened the door.
«Oh,» he said. «It’s you, Margaret.»
«Yes,» I said. «Good afternoon.»
«What can I do for you?» he said.
«Well, I thought I would like to see your wife, Mrs. Nesbitt,» I said.
«Oh,» he said.
«May I?»
«Well, she’s gone out to the shops,» he said.
«I’ll wait,» I said, and came in.
I sat down in a chair. «It’s a hot day,» I said, trying to be calm
, thinking about the bombed site and air going out of the box, and the screams getting weaker and weaker.
«Listen,» said Charlie, coming to me. –“My wife won’t be back,» he said.
«But Mr. Nesbitt,» I said, «why not?»
«Not today, that is. She’s gone to the shops, as I said, but -but then she’s going to visit her mother. She’ll be back in two or three days, perhaps a week.»
«I wanted to tell her something.»
“WHAT?»
«I just wanted to tell her there’s a woman buried in the bombed site, screaming.»
Mr. Nesbitt dropped
his cigarette.
«You’ve dropped
your cigarette, Mr. Nesbitt,»
«Have I? Oh, yes.» he said.
«It’s a real woman.»
«How do you know it is?»
«I heard her.»
«Margaret, did you - er - did you say anything about this to anyone?»-he said, lighting
another cigarette. He tried to be
casual
.
«Yes. I told lots of people»
Mr. Nesbitt burnt his hand on the match.
«Anybody doing anything about it?» he asked.
«No,» I said. «They won’t believe me.» He smiled. «Of course not. You’re only a kid. Why should they listen to you?»
«I must go now,» I said.
«Stay with me a bit,» he insisted.
«Thanks, but no,» I said.
He took my arm. «Know how to play cards?”
«Yes.»
He took out a pack of cards from a desk. «We’ll have a game.»
»I`ve got to
go
and dig.»
«A lot of time for that,» he said quietly. «Anyway, perhaps my wife will come home. You wait for her. Wait for a while.»
«
YOU think she will?»
«
Of course. Er-about that voice-is it very strong?”
“It gets weaker all the time.»
Mr. Nesbitt smiled. «You and your childish games. Here now, let’s play cards? - it’s more fun than screaming women.
«I must go. It’s late.»
«Stay a bit.» I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to keep me in his house until the screaming had stopped. He was trying to keep, me from helping her. «My wife will be home in ten minutes, he said. «You wait. You sit where you are.’
We played cards. The clock ticked
. The sun went down the sky. It was getting late. The screaming got weaker and weaker in my mind. «I’ve got to
go”, I said.
«Another game,» said Mr. Nesbitt. «Wait another hour. My wife won’t be long. Just wait.»
In another hour he looked at his watch. «Well, I think you can go now.Good-bye, Margaret.» He let me go, because he thought that by now the air must all be gone from the box. The door shut in my face.
I went back near the bombed site. What could I do? Tell my father and mother? But they didn’t believe me. Nobody would believe me!
I ran over to the place where the screaming had been and just stood there. The screaming had stopped, it was so quiet. It was all over.
It was too late, I thought. I put my ear against the ground.
And then I heard it, way down, way deep, and weak. I could hardly
hear it. The woman wasn`t screaming any more. She was singing. Something about “I loved you fair, I loved you well.”
It was a sort of sad song. Very quiet. All of those hours down under the ground in that box must have made her crazy. She just kept singing, not wanting to scream any more, just singing.
I listened to the song. Then I went home. I opened the front door. «Father,» I said. «So there you are
!
» he cried.
«Father,» I said. «She’s not screaming anymore.»
«Don’t talk about her!»
«She’s singing now,» I cried.
«You’re not telling the truth!»
«Dad,» I said, «She’s singing, and this is what she’s singing.» I sang a few of the words- «I loved you fair, I loved you well…»
Dad’s face grew pale. He came and took my arm.
«What did you say?» he said.
I sang it again, «I loved you fair, I loved you well.»
«Where did you hear that song?» he shouted.
«Out in the bombed site, just now.»
«But that’s Helen’s song, the song she wrote, years ago for me.» cried Father. «You can’t know it. Nobody knew it, only Helen and me. I never sang it to anyone, not to you or anyone. Oh, my God!» cried Father, and ran out of the door to get a spade.
The last I saw of him he was on the bombed site, digging, and lots of other people with him, digging. I felt so happy I wanted to cry.
I dialed
a number on the phone and when Dippy answered. I said, «Hullo, Dippy. Everything’s fine. Everything’s all right. The Screaming Woman isn’t screaming anymore.»
«Great,» said Dippy.
“I`ll meet you on the bombed site with a spade in two minutes,» I said. «Last one there’s a monkey.
So long!» cried Dippy.
“So long, Dippy!» I said, and ran.