Английский язык с Крестным Отцом

sober, and he tried to watch over Johnny. But the women of the party kept pulling

Johnny Fontane into bedrooms for a little chat and Johnny kept getting drunker and

drunker.

Meanwhile the woman who had won the award for the best actress was suffering the

same fate but loving it more and handling it better. Nino turned her down (отверг), the

only man at the party to do so.

Finally somebody had a great idea. The public mating (совокупление; to mate –

сочетаться /браком/; спариваться /о птицах/) of the two winners, everybody else at

the party to be spectators in the stands. The actress was stripped down and the other

women started to undress Johnny Fontane. It was then that Nino, the only sober person

there, grabbed the half-clothed Johnny and slung (to sling – швырять; вешать через

плечо) him over his shoulder and fought his way out of the house and to their car. As

he drove Johnny home, Nino thought that if that was success, he didn't want it.

Book 3

Chapter 14

The Don was a real man at the age of twelve. Short, dark, slender, living in the

strange Moorish-looking (выглядящий по-мавритански, напоминающий что-то

мавританское) village of Corleone in Sicily, he had been born Vito Andolini, but when

strange men came to kill the son of the man they had murdered, his mother sent the

young boy to America to stay with friends. And in the new land he changed his name to

Corleone to preserve some tie with his native village. It was one of the few gestures of

sentiment he was ever to make.

In Sicily at the turn of the century the Mafia was the second government, far more

powerful than the official one in Rome. Vito Corleone's father became involved in a feud

(наследственная вражда, междоусобица; кровная месть [fju:d]) with another villager

who took his case to the Mafia. The father refused to knuckle under (покориться) and in

a public quarrel killed the local Mafia chief. A week later he himself was found dead, his

body torn apart by lupara blasts. A month after the funeral Mafia gunmen came inquiring

after the young boy, Vito. They had decided that he was too close to manhood, that he

might try to avenge the death of his father in the years to come. The twelve-year-old

Vito was hidden by relatives and shipped to America. There he was boarded with the

Abbandandos, whose son Genco was later to become Consigliori to his Don.

Young Vito went to work in the Abbandando grocery store on Ninth Avenue in New

York's Hell's Kitchen. At the age of eighteen Vito married an Italian girl freshly arrived

from Sicily, a girl of only sixteen but a skilled cook, a good housewife. They settled

down in a tenement (многоквартирный дом, сдаваемый в аренду ['tenım∂nt]) on

Tenth Avenue, near 35th Street, only a few blocks from where Vito worked, and two

years later were blessed with their first child, Santino, called by all his friends Sonny

because of his devotion to his father.

In the neighborhood lived a man called Fanucci. He was a heavy-set, fierce-looking

Italian who wore expensive light-colored suits and a cream-colored fedora. This man

was reputed to be of the "Black Hand," an offshoot (ответвление, боковая ветвь) of

the Mafia which extorted money from families and storekeepers by threat of physical

violence. However, since most of the inhabitants of the neighborhood were violent

themselves, Fanucci's threats of bodily harm were effective only with elderly couples

35

without male children to defend them. Some of the storekeepers paid him trifling sums

as a matter of convenience. However, Fanucci was also a scavenger (уборщик мусора;

животное или птица, питающееся падалью ['skжvındG∂]) on fellow criminals, people

who illegally sold Italian lottery or ran gambling games in their homes. The Abbandando

grocery gave him a small tribute, this despite the protests of young Genco, who told his

father he would settle the Fanucci hash (заставит его замолчать, разделается с ним;

hash – блюдо из мелко нарезанного мяса и овощей; мешанина, путаница). His

father forbade him. Vito Corleone observed all this without feeling in any way involved.

One day Fanucci was set upon by three young men who cut his throat from ear to ear,

not deeply enough to kill him, but enough to frighten him and make him bleed a great

deal. Vito saw Fanucci fleeing from his punishers, the circular slash flowing red. What

he never forgot was Fanucci holding the cream-colored fedora under his chin to catch

the dripping blood as he ran. As if he did not want his suit soiled or did not want to leave

a shameful trail of carmine.

But this attack proved a blessing in disguise for Fanucci. The three young men were not

murderers, merely tough young boys determined to teach him a lesson and stop him

from scavenging. Fanucci proved himself a murderer. A few weeks later the knife-

wielder was shot to death and the families of the other two young men paid an

indemnity (возмещение, компенсация) to Fanucci to make him forswear his

vengeance (отказаться от мести). After that the tributes became higher and Fanucci