Английский язык с Грэмом Грином. Третий человек

Harry took a look at the toy landscape below and came away from the door. "I never feel quite safe in these things," he said. He felt the back of the door with his hand, as though he were afraid that it might fly open and launch him into that iron-ribbed space. "Victims?" he asked. "Don't be melodramatic, Rollo, look down there," he went on, pointing through the window at the people moving like black flies at the base of the Wheel. "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving—for ever? If I said you can have twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money—without hesitation? or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax." He gave his boyish conspiratorial smile, "It's the only way to save nowadays."

"Couldn't you have stuck to tyres?"

"Like Cooler? No, I've always been ambitious. "But they can't catch me, Rollo, you'll see. I'll pop up again. You can't keep a good man down." The car swung to a standstill at the highest point of the curve and Harry turned his back and gazed out of the window. Martins thought: one good shove and I could break the glass, and he pictured the body dropping among the flies. He said, "You know the police are planning to dig up your body: what will they find?"

"Harbin," Harry replied with simplicity. He turned away from the window and said, "Look at the sky."

The car had reached the top of the Wheel and hung there motionless, while the stain of the sunset ran in streaks over the wrinkled papery sky beyond the black girders.

"Why did the Russians try to take Anna Schmidt?"

"She had false papers, old man."

"I thought perhaps you were just trying to get her here—because she was your girl? Because you wanted her?"

Harry smiled. "I haven't all that influence."

"What would have happened to her?"

"Nothing very serious. She'd have been sent back to Hungary. There's nothing against her really. She'd be infinitely better off in her own country than being pushed around by the British police."

"She hasn't told them anything about you."

"She's a good little thing," Harry repeated with complacent pride.

"She loves you."

"Well, I gave her a good time while it lasted."

"And I love her."

"That's fine, old man. Be kind to her. She's worth it. I'm glad." He gave the impression of having arranged everything to everybody's satisfaction. "And you can help to keep her mouth shut. Not that she knows anything that matters."

"I'd like to knock you through the window."

"But you won't, old man. Our quarrels never last long. You remember that fearful one in the Monaco, when we swore we were through. I'd trust you anywhere, Rollo. Kurtz tried to persuade me not to come but I know you. Then he tried to persuade me to, well, arrange an accident. He told me it would be quite easy in this car."

"Except that I'm the stronger man."

"But I've got the gun. You don't think a bullet wound would show when you hit that ground?" Again the car began to move, sailing slowly down, until the flies were midgets, were recognisable human beings. "What fools we are, Rollo, talking like this, as if I'd do that to you—or you to me." He turned his back and leant his face against the glass. One thrust ... "How much do you earn a year with your Westerns, old man?"

"A thousand."

"Taxed (облагаемую налогами; tax — налог; to tax — облагать налогом). I earn thirty thousand free (я зарабатываю тридцать тысяч чистыми: «свободными»). It's the fashion (таков стиль/способ действия; fashion — форма, очертания; покрой /об одежде/; манера /поведения, держать себя/; способ действия; мода, стиль). In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings (в эти дни, старик, никто не думает с точки зрения: «в терминах» человеческих существ), Governments don't (правительства не делают /этого/), so why should we (так почему должны мы)? They talk of the people and the proletariat (они говорят о людях и пролетариате), and I talk of the mugs (а я говорю о простофилях). It's the same thing (это та же самая вещь). They have their five year plans (у них свои пятилетние планы) and so have I (и у меня тоже)."

"You used to be a Catholic (ты когда-то был католиком)."