Eugenio_di_Solito » Вт ноя 13, 2012 12:33
Обещанный профессиональный перевод (Артур Ливингстон):
The walk I chose would depend upon the inspiration of the moment: now I would seek the most crowded thoroughfares, then again some deserted solitary quarter. One night, I remember, I went to the square of Saint Peter's; and I remember also the weird impression of unreality I got from that aeon − old world enfolded by the two arms of the Portico — a world illumined by a strange dream light, engulfed in a majestic silence only emphasized by the crash of water in the two fountains. In one of these I dipped my hands. Yes, here was something tangible: the cold, I could feel! All the rest was spectral, insubstantial, deeply melancholy in a silent motionless solemnity!
Returning along the Borgo Nuovo I happened on a drunken man, whom my sober thoughtful mood seemed to strike as something funny. He approached me on tip−toe, squatted down so as to look up into my face, touched me cautiously on the elbow and finally shouted: “Cheer up, brother! Let's see you crack a smile!” I looked at the man from head to foot, hardly awake as yet to what had happened. And again he said, but in a confidential whisper:
“Cheer up, brother! To hell with it all! Just forget it. Crack a smile!”
Then he moved along, supporting his tottering form against the wall.
There in that solitary place under the very shadow of the great sanctum, the fortuitous appearance of that drunken man, giving me his strangely intimate and strangely profound advice, seemed to daze me. I stood looking after him till he disappeared in the dark: then, I burst into a loud harsh bitter laugh:
“Cheer up! Yes, brother! But I can't roll from tavern to tavern as you are doing, looking for happiness, as you are doing, at the bottom of a mug of wine! I should never find it there — nor anywhere else. I go to the cafe, my dear sir, where I find respectable people — smoking and talking politics! Cheer up, you say! But, my dear sir, people can be happy only on one condition — I am quoting you a reactionary, who frequents my respectable cafe: on the condition, namely that we be governed by a good old−fashioned absolutist! You are only a poor beggar, my dear sir, you know nothing about such things. But it's the fact nevertheless. What's the trouble with people like me? Why are we so glum? Democracy, my dear sir, democracy! Government by the majority! When you have one boss, he knows that it's his job to satisfy many people; but when everybody has a say in running things, everybody thinks of satisfying himself. And what do we get? Tyranny, my dear sir, in its most stupid form: tyranny masked as liberty! Of course you do! What do you think is the matter with me? Just what I say: tyranny disguised as liberty! Pua−a−h! Let's go home again!”
But that was to be a night of adventures.
I was going through the dimly lighted Tordinona district, when I heard smothered cries coming from a dark alley off my street; and then there was a rush of people engaged in a rough−and−tumble, four men, as it proved, using heavy canes on a woman of the sidewalks.
Now I mention this little episode not to show what a brave man I can be on occasion, but just to tell how frightened I was at some of its consequences. “When I interfered they turned on me — four against one and two with their knives out. I had a good stocky cane myself and I swung it around, jumping about a good deal to avoid an attack from behind. At last the metal knob of my cane reached one of my antagonists full on the head. He staggered away, and finally took to his heels. Since the woman had been screaming at the top of her lungs, the other three thought it was time to be going too. I don't remember exactly how I got a deep cut in the middle of my forehead. My first thought was to get the woman quieted down: but when she saw the blood streaming over my face, she began to shout for help louder than ever, trying also to wipe my wound with a silk handkerchief she had removed from her neck:
“No, let me alone, for heaven's sake!” I protested in disgust. “Get away from here, at once... I'm all right! They'll be arresting you!”
I hurried to a fountain on the bridge near by to wash the blood from my eyes. But by this time, two policemen had come running up, and they insisted on knowing what all the noise was about. The woman, who was a Neapolitan and liked to dramatize in the manner of her people, began to narrate the guaio, the “woe,” she had been through, addressing the tenderest words of praise in my direction. The gendarmes insisted on my going to the station with them to give a full account of my rescue; and it was not an easy matter to dissuade them from this idea. A pretty scrape that would have been for me! My name and address on the police roster! And a write−up in the papers, the next day! Adriano Meis, a hero! I, whose duty it was to keep out of sight, in the dark, and not attract anyone's attention!
Not even a hero, could I be, then — unless I wanted to pay for the pleasure with my scalp....
On the other hand, since I was dead already, when you think of it... why worry so much about that precious scalp?
Просто и красиво.