Илья Франк - Английский язык с Крестным Отцом

stupid. What did you earn for that night's work? Fifty dollars each? Twenty dollars? You

risked your life for twenty dollars, eh?"

As if he had not heard these last words, Sonny said defiantly (с вызовом), "I saw you

kill Fanucci."

The Don said, "Ahhh" and sank back in his chair. He waited.

Sonny said, "When Fanucci left the building, Mama said I could go up the house. I

saw you go up the roof and I followed you. I saw everything you did. I stayed up there

and I saw you throw away the wallet and the gun."

The Don sighed. "Well, then I can't talk to you about how you should behave. Don't

you want to finish school, don't you want to be a lawyer? Lawyers can steal more

money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks."

Sonny grinned at him and said slyly, "I want to enter the family business." When he

saw that the Don's face remained impassive, that he did not laugh at the joke, he added

hastily, "I can learn how to sell olive oil."

Still the Don did not answer. Finally he shrugged. "Every man has one destiny," he

said. He did not add that the witnessing of Fanucci's murder had decided that of his son.

He merely turned away and added quietly, "Come in tomorrow morning at nine o'clock.

Genco will show you what to do."

But Genco Abbandando, with that shrewd insight that a Consigliori must have,

realized the true wish of the Don and used Sonny mostly as a bodyguard for his father,

a position in which he could also learn the subtleties (subtlety – тонкость,

изощренность, хитрость; subtle – тонкий, нежный; утонченный) of being a Don. And

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it brought out a professorial instinct in the Don himself, who often gave lectures on how

to succeed for the benefit of his eldest son.

Besides his oft-repeated theory that a man has but one destiny, the Don constantly

reproved Sonny for that young man's outbursts of temper. The Don considered a use of

threats the most foolish kind of exposure (выставление /на солнце, под дождь/;

подвергание /риску/; to expose – выставлять, подвергать действию /дождя, солнца/;

подвергать риску); the unleashing (to unleash – спускать с привязи) of anger without

forethought as the most dangerous indulgence (потворство своим слабостям

[ın'dΛldG∂ns]; to indulge – позволять себе удовольствие, давать себе волю). No one

had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an

uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable. And so he tried to teach Sonny his own

disciplines. He claimed that there was no greater natural advantage in life than having

an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your

virtues.

The caporegime , Clemenza, took Sonny in hand and taught him how to shoot and to

wield a garrot (владеть гарротой /шнуром для удушения/). Sonny had no taste for the

Italian rope, he was too Americanized. He preferred the simple, direct, impersonal

Anglo-Saxon gun, which saddened Clemenza. But Sonny became a constant and

welcome companion to his father, driving his car, helping him in little details. For the

next two years he seemed like the usual son entering his father's business, not too

bright, not too eager, content to hold down (удержать, не потерять) a soft job.

Meanwhile his boyhood chum and semiadopted brother Tom Hagen was going to

college. Fredo was still in high school; Michael, the youngest brother, was in grammar

school, and baby sister Connie was a toddling girl of four. The family had long since

moved to an apartment house in the Bronx. Don Corleone was considering buying a

house in Long Island, but he wanted to fit this in with other plans he was formulating.

Vito Corleone was a man with vision. All the great cities of America were being torn by

underworld strife (борьба, раздор). Guerrilla wars by the dozen flared up, ambitious

hoodlums trying to carve themselves a bit of empire; men like Corleone himself were

trying to keep their borders and rackets secure. Don Corleone saw that the newspapers

and government agencies were using these killings to get stricter and stricter laws, to

use harsher police methods. He foresaw that public indignation might even lead to a

suspension of democratic procedures which could be fatal to him and his people. His

own empire, internally, was secure. He decided to bring peace to all the warring factions

in New York City and then in the nation.

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He had no illusions about the dangerousness of his mission. He spent the first year

meeting with different chiefs of gangs in New York, laying the groundwork, sounding

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them out (to sound – зондировать, измерять глубину /лотом/; испытать), proposing

spheres of influence that would be honored by a loosely bound confederated council.

But there were too many factions, too many special interests that conflicted. Agreement

was impossible. Like other great rulers and lawgivers in history Don Corleone decided

that order and peace were impossible until the number of reigning states had been

reduced to a manageable number.

There were five or six "Families" too powerful to eliminate. But the rest, the

neighborhood Black Hand terrorists, the free-lance shylocks, the strong-arm

bookmakers operating without the proper, that is to say paid, protection of the legal

authorities, would have to go. And so he mounted what was in effect a colonial war

against these people and threw all the resources of the Corleone organization against

them.

The pacification of the New York area took three years and had some unexpected

rewards. At first it took the form of bad luck. A group of mad-dog Irish stickup (налет,

ограбление) artists the Don had marked for extermination (уничтожение) almost

carried the day (to carry the day – одержать победу) with sheer Emerald Isle йlan (с

чисто ирландским напором, стремительностью: йlan [eı’lα:ŋ] /франц./; Emerald Isle

= Ireland). By chance, and with suicidal bravery, one of these Irish gunmen pierced the

Don's protective cordon and put a shot into his chest. The assassin was immediately

riddled with bullets but the damage was done.

However this gave Santino Corleone his chance. With his father out of action, Sonny

took command of a troop, his own regime , with the rank of caporegime , and like a

young, untrumpeted (trumpet [‘trΛmpıt] – труба; to trumpet – трубить, возвещать,

восхвалять) Napoleon, showed a genius for city warfare. He also showed a merciless

ruthlessness, the lack of which had been Don Corleone's only fault as a conqueror.

From 1935 to 1937 Sonny Corleone made a reputation as the most cunning and

relentless executioner the underworld had yet known. Yet for sheer terror even he was

eclipsed by the awesome man named Luca Brasi.

It was Brasi who went after the rest of the Irish gunmen and single-handedly wiped

them out. It was Brasi, operating alone when one of the six powerful families tried to

interfere and become the protector of the independents, who assassinated the head of

the family as a warning. Shortly after, the Don recovered from his wound and made

peace with that particular family.

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By 1937 peace and harmony reigned in New York City except for minor incidents,

minor misunderstandings which were, of course, sometimes fatal.

As the rulers of ancient cities always kept an anxious eye on the barbarian tribes

roving around their walls, so Don Corleone kept an eye on the affairs of the world

outside his world. He noted the coming of Hitler, the fall of Spain, Germany's strong-

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arming of Britain at Munich. Unblinkered (незашоренный, неослепленный; blinkers –

наглазники, шоры) by that outside world, he saw clearly the coming global war and he

understood the implications. His own world would be more impregnable

(непрницаемый, неприступный) than before. Not only that, fortunes could be made in

time of war by alert, foresighted folk. But to do so peace must reign in his domain while

war raged in the world outside.

Don Corleone carried his message through the United States. He conferred with

compatriots in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami,

and Boston. He was the underworld apostle of peace and, by 1939, more successful

than any Pope, he had achieved a working agreement amongst the most powerful

underworld organizations in the country. Like the Constitution of the United States this

agreement respected fully the internal authority of each member in his state or city. The

agreement covered only spheres of influence and an agreement to enforce peace in the

underworld.

And so when World War II broke out in 1939, when the United States joined the

conflict in 1941, the world of Don Vito Corleone was at peace, in order, fully prepared to

reap the golden harvest on equal terms with all the other industries of a booming

America. The Corleone Family had a hand in supplying black-market OPA food stamps,

gasoline stamps, even travel priorities. It could help get war contracts and then help get

black-market materials for those garment center clothing firms who were not given

enough raw material because they did not have government contracts. He could even

get all the young men in his organization, those eligible (могущий быть избранным

['elıdG∂bl]) for Army draft (набор, призыв), excused from fighting in the foreign war. He

did this with the aid of doctors who advised what drugs had to be taken before physical

examination, or by placing the men in draft-exempt (exempt [ıg’zempt] –

освобожденный /от чего-либо/) positions in the war industries.

And so the Don could take pride in his rule. His world was safe for those who had

sworn loyalty to him; other men who believed in law and order were dying by the

millions. The only fly in the ointment (мазь, /здесь/ мирро /для помазания/) was that

his own son, Michael Corleone, refused to be helped, insisted on volunteering to serve

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his own country. And to the Don's astonishment, so did a few of his other young men in

the organization. One of the men, trying to explain this to his caporegime , said, "This

country has been good to me." Upon this story being relayed to the Don he said angrily

to the caporegime , "I have been good to him." It might have gone badly for these people