He said, "You still love Harry (ты все еще любишь Гарри), don't you (не так ли)?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps I do (возможно, я люблю). I don't know (я не знаю)." He dropped his hands (он уронил свои руки) and said, "I’ll be pushing off (ну, я пошел; to push off — отталкиваться, отплывать /от берега/; убираться, уходить)."
persuade [pq'sweId], moustache [mq'stRS], justice ['GAstIs], headache ['hedeIk], comic ['kOmIk], quarrel ['kwOr(q)l]
"Those children..."
She said angrily, "For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew."
He said, "Don't talk such bloody wisdom. Don't you see that I love you?"
She looked at him in astonishment. "You?"
"Yes, me. I don't kill people with fake drugs. I'm not a hypocrite who persuades people that I'm the greatest ... I'm just a bad writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls ..."
She said, "But I don't even know what colour your eyes are. If you'd rung me up just now and asked me whether you were dark or fair or wore a moustache, I wouldn't have known."
"Can't you get him out of your mind?"
"No."
He said, "As soon as they've cleared up this Koch murder, I'm leaving Vienna. I can't feel interested any longer in whether Kurtz killed Harry—or the third man. Whoever killed him it was a kind of justice. Maybe I'd kill him myself under these circumstances. But you still love him. You love a cheat, a murderer."
"I loved a man," she said. "I told you—a man doesn't alter because you find out more about him. He's still the same man."
"I hate the way you talk. I've got a splitting headache, and you talk and talk ..."
"I didn't ask you to come."
"You make me cross."
Suddenly she laughed. She said, "You are so comic. You come here at three in the morning—a stranger— and say you love me. Then you get angry and pick a quarrel. What do you expect me to do—or say?"
"I haven't seen you laugh before. Do it again. I like it."
"There isn't enough for two laughs," she said.
He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. He said, "I'd make comic faces all day long. I'd stand on my head and grin at you between my legs. I'd learn a lot of jokes from the books on After-dinner Speaking."
"Come away from the window. There are no curtains." '
"There's nobody to see," but automatically checking his statement, he wasn't quite so sure: a long shadow that had moved, perhaps with the movement of clouds over the moon, was motionless again. He said, "You still love Harry, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Perhaps I do. I don't know." He dropped his hands and said, "I’ll be pushing off."
He walked rapidly away (он быстро зашагал прочь): he didn't bother to see (он не побеспокоился посмотреть) whether he was being followed (преследовали ли его), to check up on the shadow (чтобы проверить тень). But passing by the end of the street (но, проходя мимо конца улицы) he happened to turn (он случился повернуть = получилось так, что он повернул) and there just around the corner (и там, прямо за углом), pressed against a wall to escape notice (прижатая к стене, чтобы не быть замеченной: «чтобы избежать замечания»), was a thick stocky figure (была плотная, коренастая фигура). |