The Last Tycoon / Последний магнат. Книга для чтения на английском языке

A sudden dip indicated that it would. It tipped Wylie White into the seat opposite me, shunted the stewardess precipitately down in the direction of the cockpit, and plunked the Jewish man into a sitting position. After the studied, unrufled exclamations of distaste that befitted the air-minded, we settled down. There was an introduction.

“Miss Brady – Mr. Schwartz,” said Wylie White. “He’s a great friend of your father’s, too.”

Mr. Schwartz nodded so vehemently that I could almost hear him saying: “It’s true. As God is my judge, it’s true!”

He might have said this right out loud at one time in his life – but he was obviously a man to whom something had happened. Meeting him was like encountering a friend who has been in a fist fight or collision, and got flattened[7 - got flattened – (разг.) проиграл]. You stare at your friend and say: “What happened to you?” And he answers something unintelligible through broken teeth and swollen lips. He can’t even tell you about it.

Mr. Schwartz was physically unmarked; the exaggerated Persian nose and oblique eye-shadow were as congenital as the tip-tilted Irish redness around my father’s nostrils.

“Nashville!” cried Wylie White. “That means we go to a hotel. We don’t get to the coast till tomorrow night – if then. My God! I was born in Nashville.”

“I should think you’d like to see it again.”

“Never – I’ve kept away for fifteen years. I hope I’ll never see it again.”

But he would – for the plane was unmistakably going down, down, down, like Alice in the rabbit hole. Cupping my hand against the window I saw the blur of the city far away on the left. The green sign “Fasten your belts – No smoking” had been on since we first rode into the storm.

“Did you hear what he said?” said Schwartz from one of his fiery silences across the aisle.

“Hear what?” asked Wylie.

“Hear what he’s calling himself,” said Schwartz. “Mr. Smith!”

“Why not?” asked Wylie.

“Oh nothing,” said Schwartz quickly. “I just thought it was funny, Smith.” I never heard a laugh with less mirth in it: “Smith!”

I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the days of the stage-stops – nothing quite as lonely, as somber-silent. The old red-brick depots were built right into the towns they marked – people didn’t get off at those isolated stations unless they lived there. But airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up to two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity. In the big transcontinental planes we were the coastal rich, who casually alighted from our cloud in mid-America. High adventure might be among us, disguised as a movie star. But mostly it wasn’t. And I always wished fervently that we looked more interesting than we did – just as I often have at premières, when the fans look at you with scornful reproach because you’re not a star.

On the ground Wylie and I were suddenly friends, because he held out his arm to steady me when I got out of the plane. From then on, he made a dead set for me[8 - made a dead set for me – (разг.) сделал на меня стойку] – and I didn’t mind. From the moment we walked into the airport it had become plain that if we were stranded here we were stranded here together. (It wasn’t like the time I lost my boy – the time my boy played the piano with that girl Reina in a little New England farmhouse near Bennington, and I realized at last I wasn’t wanted. Guy Lombardo was on the air playing Top Hat and Cheek to Cheek, and she taught him the melodies. The keys falling like leaves and her hands splayed over his as she showed him a black chord. I was a freshman then.)

When we went into the airport Mr. Schwartz was along with us, too, but he seemed in a sort of dream. All the time we were trying to get accurate information at the desk, he kept staring at the door that led out to the landing field, as if he were afraid the plane would leave without him. Then I excused myself for a few minutes and something happened that I didn’t see, but when I came back he and White were standing close together, White talking and Schwartz looking twice as much as if a great truck had just backed up over him.

He didn’t stare at the door to the landing field any more. I heard the end of Wylie White’s remark…

“ – I told you to shut up. It serves you right.[9 - It serves you right. – (разг.) Так тебе и надо.]”

“I only said —”

He broke off as I came up and asked if there was any news. It was then half-past two in the morning.

“A little,” said Wylie White. “They don’t think we’ll be able to start for three hours anyhow, so some of the softies are going to a hotel. But I’d like to take you out to the Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson[10 - Andrew Jackson – Эндрю Джексон (1767–1845), американский генерал, 7-й президент США (1829–1837)].”

“How could we see it in the dark?” demanded Schwartz.

“Hell, it’ll be sunrise in two hours.”

“You two go,” said Schwartz.

“All right – you take the bus to the hotel. It’s still waiting – he’s in there.” Wylie’s voice had a taunt in it. “Maybe it’d be a good thing.”

“No, I’ll go along with you,” said Schwartz hastily.

We took a taxi in the sudden country dark outside, and he seemed to cheer up. He patted my knee-cap encouragingly.

“I should go along,” he said, “I should be chaperone. Once upon a time when I was in the big money[11 - was in the big money – (сленг) якшался с очень богатыми людьми], I had a daughter – a beautiful daughter.”

He spoke as if she had been sold to creditors as a tangible asset.

“You’ll have another,” Wylie assured him. “You’ll get it all back. Another turn of the wheel and you’ll be where Cecilia’s papa is, won’t he, Cecilia?”

“Where is this Hermitage?” asked Schwartz presently. “Far away at the end of nowhere? Will we miss the plane?”

“Skip it[12 - Skip it – (разг.) Да ладно; неважно],” said Wylie. “We ought to’ve brought the stewardess along for you. Didn’t you admire the stewardess? I thought she was pretty cute.”

We drove for a long time over a bright level countryside, just a road and a tree and a shack and a tree, and then suddenly along a winding twist of woodland. I could feel even in the darkness that the trees of the woodland were green – that it was all different from the dusty olive-tint of California. Somewhere we passed a negro driving three cows ahead of him, and they mooed as he scatted them to the side of the road. They were real cows, with warm, fresh, silky flanks, and the negro grew gradually real out of the darkness with his big brown eyes staring at us close to the car, as Wylie gave him a quarter. He said “Thank you – thank you,” and stood there, and the cows mooed again into the night as we drove off.

I thought of the first sheep I ever remember seeing – hundreds of them, and how our car drove suddenly into them on the back lot of the old Laemmle studio. They were unhappy about being in pictures, but the men in the car with us kept saying:

“Swell?”

“Is that what you wanted, Dick?”

“Isn’t that swell?” And the man named Dick kept standing up in the car as if he were Cortéz[13 - Cortéz – Эрнандо Кортес (1485–1547), испанский конкистадор] or Balboa[14 - Balboa – Васко Нуньес де Бальбоа (1475–1519), испанский исследователь, конкистадор], looking over that grey fleecy undulation. If I ever knew what picture they were in, I have long forgotten.

We had driven an hour. We crossed a brook over an old rattly iron bridge laid with planks. Now there were roosters crowing and blue-green shadows stirring every time we passed a farmhouse.

“I told you it’d be morning soon,” said Wylie. “I was born near here – the son of impoverished southern paupers. The family mansion is now used as an outhouse. We had four servants – my father, my mother and my two sisters. I refused to join the guild, and so I went to Memphis to start my career, which has now reached a dead end[15 - has now reached a dead end – (разг.) зашла в тупик].” He put his arm around me: “Cecilia, will you marry me, so I can share the Brady fortune?”

He was disarming enough, so I let my head lie on his shoulder.

“What do you do, Celia. Go to school?”

“I go to Bennington. I’m a junior.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I should have known, but I never had the advantage of college training. But a junior – why I read in Esquire that juniors have nothing to learn, Cecilia.”

“Why do people think that college girls —”

“Don’t apologize – knowledge is power.”

“You’d know from the way you talk that we were on our way to Hollywood,” I said. “It’s always years and years behind the times.”

He pretended to be shocked.

“You mean girls in the East have no private lives?”

“That’s the point. They have got private lives. You’re bothering me, let go.”