The description of people's appearances in novels and shorter pieces of fiction

[acapnotic]

David Selig is 41 and counting. Slightly above medium height, he has the lean figure of a bachelor accustomed to his own meager cooking, and his customary facial expression is a mild, puzzled frown. He blinks a lot. In his faded blue denim jacket, heavy-duty boots, and 1969-vintage striped bells he presents a superficially youthful appearance, at least from the neck down; but in fact he looks like some sort of refugee from an illicit research laboratory where the balding, furrowed heads of anguished middle-aged men are grafted to the reluctant bodies of adolescent boys.

Dying Inside by Robert our Silverberg :)

[VictorB]

bells

Брюки-клёш?

[acapnotic]

VictorB, я так же подумал. Но раньше не встречал.

[Sam Beckett]

Брюки-клёш?

Сразу вспомнил про "колокола"

[VictorB]

Немного в сторону от темы описания людей - описание в книге места на границе штатов Джорджия и Алабама, читая которое (описание), я не смог не вспомнить (и найти очень похожим - на мой взгляд - по стилю) описание другого места в штате Алабама, в другой очень известной книге, другого американского автора, ныне покойного.
Мне просто интересно, сможет ли кто-нибудь догадаться, какая книга у меня на уме? В качестве подсказки, кроме штата Алабама, может сработать название книги - имя персонажа (схожее по звучанию с именем персонажа из второй книги) - которая у меня в процессе прочтения. С неё я начал свое знакомство с новым для меня автором, в прошлом - адвокатом. По первым четырем главам читается легко, написана в 2006 г. - так что, никакой обсолитной лексики, грамотная разговорная речь персонажей.

The town of Piney Grove nestled in the low-slung hills west of Atlanta* within tobacco-spitting distance of the Alabama state line. Lee Mitchell and many of those living on the Georgia side of the border looked down their noses at their Alabama neighbors. He claimed that travelers crossing the state line into the central time zone should set their watches back one hundred years. Jimmy wasn’t sure what he meant.

Regional prejudices aside, the daily routines of people living in Piney Grove more closely resembled those of their Alabama neighbors than the lifestyle of Atlanta suburbanites. The rural landscape on both sides of the border was pocked with run-down houses inhabited by slow-talking residents. Piney Grove had an Alabama counterpart twenty-five miles to the west.
Boys in Cattaloochie County grew up scratching chigger bites after picking wild blackberries and assumed the most common type of jelly on earth came from dusky muscadines. People knew their neighbors, and if a local family bought a new car or pickup, they couldn’t expect to keep it a secret. Compared to the slow pace and simplicity of life in Piney Grove, Atlanta occupied another universe.

The heart of Piney Grove was much the same as when Jimmy’s father walked its tree-lined streets as a twelve-year-old boy. But change pressed in from the Atlanta side of the county, and in recent years a few national chain stores had opened their doors. Lee Mitchell complained that Atlanta would eventually swallow Piney Grove. That, too, puzzled Jimmy.

Six months out of the year, the sun beat down on any exposed red clay and baked it brickyard tough. Jimmy didn’t mind the heat. He didn’t know there were places where cool mountain breezes blew or refreshing afternoon showers fell. He and Buster played outside even if the summer sun made the air above the brown grass shimmer with heat.

—Jimmy by Robert Whitlow
* Столица штата Джорджия
Еще одна подсказка: в обеих книгах отцы ключевых н/летних персонажей - адвокаты, выступающие в суде в качестве защитников.

[VictorB]

Slightly built, the balding football coach weighed half as much as some of the team’s offensive linemen, yet he had the force of personality to intimidate a massive player being courted by Southeastern Conference football powerhouses. When angry, Coach Nixon would get on his toes in front of a player and berate him in a torrent of cutting words mixed with saliva. Uncle Bart said no player dared wipe away the spit before the coach turned away.

[VictorB]

I reached the Common Room just in time. The New Head was arriving, with Pat Bishop, the Second Master, and his secretary, Marlene, an ex-parent who joined us when her son died. The New Head is brittle, elegant and slightly sinister, like Christopher Lee in Dracula. The Old Head was foul-tempered, overbearing, rude and opinionated; exactly what I enjoy most in a Headmaster. Fifteen years after his departure, I still miss him.
...
‘Welcome back, all of you.’ That was Pat Bishop, generally acknowledged to be the human face of the School. Big, cheery, still absurdly youthful at fifty-five, he retains the broken-nosed and ruddy charm of an oversized schoolboy. He’s a good man, though. Kind, hardworking, fiercely loyal to the School, where he too was once a pupil – but not overly bright, in spite of his Oxford education. A man of action, our Pat, of compassion, not of intellect; better suited to classroom and rugby pitch than to management committee and Governors’ Meeting. We don’t hold that against him, however. There is more than enough intelligence in St Oswald’s; what we really need is more of Bishop’s type of humanity.

Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris

[VictorB]

Описание старым учителем своего ученика, каким тот был в ранне-юношеском возрасте:

He arrived in my life at the age of fourteen, in the autumn of ’81. He was new to St. Oswald’s; a seventh-term boy with an impressive academic report and a flawless behavioral record. Shiny hair of impeccable (though slightly girlish) cut; a face unmarked by adolescent acne; even his uniform looked neater than the other boys’; his shoes polished to an alarming gloss and his School tie knotted in just the right way—
I’ll admit it: I disliked him on sight. There was something cold about Harrington; the same coldness, perhaps, that defines our own Bob Strange. He was polite; he was handsome; he was correct; he always said sir. But he had a way of saying it, and a way of looking at you that made you want to check whether your fly was zipped up, and made you aware of the sweat stains under your armpits and the chalk marks on your jacket and the mistake you made in Latin translation that you thought you could pass off as a joke—
His Latin, I found, was excellent. He’d been homeschooled until he was nine, after which time he had been placed in one of our local Middle Schools, and by the time he reached St. Oswald’s, he was already more than up to standard. This pleased me at first; one of the problems of seventh-term entrants was that barely half of them had studied Latin at all, and it was my job, as the most junior Classicist, to catch them up over lunchtimes and Breaks, while Dr. Shakeshafte, my Head of Department (who also happened to be the Headmaster), sat in his office, listening to the cricket and eating cheese against his doctor’s advice.
Harrington, however, needed no help from me. He did his work quickly and accurately and with a look of polite boredom on his face, never volunteering answers, but never making a mistake either. He was easy to ignore in favor of those boys who genuinely found the subject taxing; my group numbered thirty-five, and although I didn’t exactly neglect Harrington, I’ll admit he was easy to overlook. So easy, in fact, that when the first complaint came, it took me altogether by surprise.

Кстати, никак не мог не поинтересоваться у бота (а кто же еще так скоро отзовется?), какой эффект дожно производить на читателя такое количество семиколонов, которыми (знаками препинания, и не только ими - там еще и эмдэшев более чем в достатке) автор так обильно разукрашивает свою прозу?
Кому интересно, прошу под спойлер, потому что это действительно так работает - во всяком случае так мне кажется: в смысле, они ну вот нисколько не раздражают, скорее наоборот.

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Joanne Harris often employs semicolons to create complex sentence structures that reflect the intricacy of human relationships and emotions. The semicolon serves as a bridge between closely related independent clauses, allowing for a smoother flow of ideas while also creating a rhythm that can mirror the pacing of thought.

In the excerpt you provided, the use of semicolons helps convey layered observations about the characters and the narrator's feelings. For example, the semicolons can emphasize the contrast between Harrington's impressive qualities and the narrator's immediate dislike for him. This layering captures the nuanced, sometimes contradictory emotions we may feel towards others.

Moreover, semicolons can evoke a reflective tone, inviting readers to pause and consider the depth of the narrator's insights. By connecting thoughts in this way, Harris creates a more intimate and engaging narrative style that invites readers deeper into the protagonist's observations and judgments.

Overall, the frequent use of semicolons aligns with Harris's style of blending detailed description with introspective commentary, enhancing the reader's experience of the text.

[Idealist]

Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris

Стоит почитать?

[VictorB]

Стоит почитать?

Стоит прочитать.
Лично мне хорошо зашла, если следом вторую в трилогии читать начал.

СпойлерПоказать

Люблю неожиданные развязки и повествования от двух первых лиц, особенно когда одно из них, почти в самом конце, оказывется совсем не тем, на кого думал на протяжении всей книги.

[Idealist]

Скачал первую книгу, две другие не нашел. Но я еще H.I.V.E. не дочитал.

[VictorB]

Весьма искуссное описание случайной встречи пожилого учителя с группой незнакомых подростков на безлюдной улице. Умудренный огромным педагогическим опытом и пользующийся непререкаемым авторитетом среди своих учеников, сверстников встретившихся ему ребят из других школ, он оказывается абсолютно бессильным перед ватагой наглых, храбрящихся друг перед другом малолеток. Поведение подростков, шок и унижение, испытанное человеком, посвятившим почти всю жизнь учительству, а так же избранный им способ выхода из конфликта описаны, кмк, психологически довольно достоверно.
Книжка та же самая.

I walked home through the park again, hearing the sounds of night in the trees. The cold air smelled of woodsmoke; the leaves were wet beneath my feet. I’d almost reached the end of the park, where Millionaires’ Row turns on to Westgate. A little group of teenage boys in hooded sweatshirts and knitted hats were standing under the lamppost near the swing set in the children’s playground, looking up to no good. Of course, that’s how teenage boys always look whenever adults are around. It’s a kind of default setting, composed partly of guilt and partly of resentment. But sullenness breeds more of the same, and I have always made a point of treating teenagers the same way I would treat any adult. My boys tend to appreciate it, and although I could see that this little group was made up of Sunnybankers, I assumed that they would too.
I smiled and said: “Good evening.”
The boys said nothing, but stared at me. One of them, a freckled boy with long hair under his knitted cap and a cigarette stub between his fingers, smirked and said something under his breath. The other boys sniggered unpleasantly.
The freckled boy said: “Pervert.”
I felt a trickle of unease, all the more galling for the fact that I was on my own ground, less than three hundred yards from home. But boys are like house cats, gentle by day, unpredictable by night. A schoolmaster, on the other hand, is always a schoolmaster: at home; in town; in the post office queue; in the park in the evening. Boys do not really believe, deep down, that Masters have a life outside St. Oswald’s. They secretly imagine us hanging like bats, upside down in our stockrooms, emerging only to mark books, to collect detention slips, or to hatch inscrutably evil schemes to bring about the downfall of the young.
I summoned my best schoolmaster’s voice and leveled my sternest gaze on the boy. “I beg your pardon?”
The freckled boy sniggered again. He looked about fourteen; half grown, with nicotine stains on his fingers. “Fucking pervert, chatting up lads.” He gave me a look like that of a dog unsure of whether to bite or run. Alone, he probably would have run; but the presence of the other boys gave him a kind of bravado.
“Give us a tenner and I won’t report you,” he told me, his grin broadening.
“Give him twenty and he’ll suck you off,” chimed in one of the other boys. “Assuming you can still get it up.”
For a moment, I stared at them. Yes, I’ll admit it, I was shocked. Not so much by the language—after all, St. Oswald’s boys can swear as roundly as the best of them—but by the hard and cynical look in those teenagers’ faces. Some of it was a joke, I knew; but beneath was a stratum of knowledge. Boys may be children during the day, but at night they can become predators. And in a world that turns on fear, suspicion, and entitlement, they have learned to manipulate those levers that make adults afraid.
Afraid of what? They were only boys. I work with boys almost every day. And yet, boys have an instinct for fear; they sense it as a shark scents blood. I’ve seen it happen often enough at St. Oswald’s—at St. Oswald’s and elsewhere. Teaching is a game of bluff, in which the smallest weakness shown can mean the end of authority. And everyone has a weakness. Mine was a word. Just a word, but a word that can tear a schoolmaster apart.
Pervert. There’s a dangerous word. Of all the accusations that could be made against a Master, that’s the one that does not need the slightest shred of evidence. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words—that word—can obliterate every part of a man’s life: every good deed; every kindness; as if the man had never lived.
I tried to summon my schoolmaster’s voice, but for once there was nothing. No sarcasm; no anger; no joke; not even a Latin epithet. I’m ashamed to say that I actually ran—head down, as if against the wind—hearing their laughter behind me and with the invisible finger pressing against my breastbone with a dreadful persistence.
A thirty-second run is as long as I manage nowadays. Even so, it was enough to take me out of their orbit. I slowed to a shamble behind a row of laurels and finally reached the gates of the park, my heart now beating uncomfortably fast, and bent over like a runner at the end of a long race.

[Easy-Breezy English]

Книжка та же самая.

Интересный отрывок, захотелось прочитать.

[VictorB]

Интересный отрывок, захотелось прочитать.

Вторую книжку серии дочитываю. Первая была по-интересней, но и эта хорошо идет.

[Easy-Breezy English]

Вторую книжку серии дочитываю. Первая была по-интересней, но и эта хорошо идет.

Поставлю в очередь, понравился слог.

Надоело читать по пять книг одновременно и ни одной не дочитывать. Эпидемия клипового мышления и рассеянного внимания не обошла меня стороной. Решила применить метод Алексея Александровича Каренина — не начинать новой книги, если не прочитана предыдущая. И все шло неплохо, пока однажды дождливым вечером я внезапно не подошла к шкафу со старыми книгами. Шкаф достался от бабушки, он пахнет деревом, детством и уютом. Храню там самые-самые книги, которые таскаю за собой по свету. Можно взять случайную книгу и вдруг оказаться в каком-то моменте своей жизни. Как машина времени.

И вот я шкаф открыла, и рука сама вытянула The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Я по этому учебнику когда-то изучала историю США, там все, начиная с заселения материка индейцами и кончая серединой 90-х (в моем издании). Вот не знаю, что это за порыв, но читаю опять с начала, ничего не пропуская, а там 700+ страниц. И параллельно опять пять других книг. :-)) Но до вашей тоже дойду.

[Kind_Punk]

I’m ashamed to say that I actually ran

А что тут еще делать? Где-то у Чейза кстати было:

I knew all about delinquent kids. Who hasn’t read about them?

A dark night and suddenly to be set upon by a bunch of little savages: no holds barred. A kick in the face could lose a set of decent teeth. A kick in the groin could make a man impotent.

Кстати упоминал как-то, что переводе Чейз лучше. Вот как это перевели:

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Что ж, я прекрасно представлял себе
уличную шпану и знал, на что она способна. Кто не слышал о них! Темным
вечером ты идешь по улице и вдруг на тебя набрасывается свора маленьких
свирепых дикарей. Для них не существует никаких запретов. Удар в лицо может
лишить набора приличных зубов, пинок в пах запросто делает человека
импотентом на весь оставшийся срок жизни.

И еще один вариант, тут меньше старались )

СпойлерПоказать

Я много чего слышал о малолетних преступниках. В конце концов, все мы читаем газеты.

Идешь, к примеру, темным вечером, а тебя поджидает банда дьяволят. Игра без правил. Пнут в лицо – растеряешь последние зубы. Пнут в пах – останешься импотентом.

[VictorB]

no holds barred

О, идиомка на заметку! )

Где-то у Чейза кстати было

Have A Change Of Scene - наверное не сильно известный его роман, если нигде не экранзировался ))

[Kind_Punk]

не сильно известный его роман, если нигде не экранзировался ))

Ну сходу только одну экранизацию вспомню -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_Magic

Хотя список достаточно длинный фильмов, но походу большая часть класса Б )

В целом такое чувство, что автор не шибко-то и популярный в США.

[VictorB]

Ну сходу только одну экранизацию вспомню

Только у нас (80е-90е) их аж четыре было, по телеку показывали )

В целом такое чувство, что автор не шибко-то и популярный в США.

Так старье ведь, как и Хэммет, Чендлер, Гарднер, Стаут... на любителя или стареющих фанатов жанра докомпьютерных времен ))

[Kind_Punk]

Только у нас (80е-90е) их аж четыре было

Похоже, Чейз - big in Japan, so to say )

[VictorB]

big in Japan

А песне-то 40 лет... Само выражение - на заметку ))

[VictorB]

Слушаю на русском аудио книгу "Благоволительницы" Джонатана Литтелла. Написана на французском и конечно же переведена на английский (The Kindly Ones). Именно в этом переводе я сверяю места, наиболее потрясшие меня в русском. Среди них (из последних) - расстрел в районе Минеральных вод так называемого горского еврея, дагестанца-долгожителя, исповедующего иудаизм. "Беседа" с ним рассказчика, руководащего расстрелом заслуживает особого внимания.
Отрывок объемный, поэтому для тех, кому вдруг это интересно, убираю его под спойлер. Сама книга - чтение не для слабонервных, но (в аудио версии) как-то странно захватывает... обыденностью описания того ужаса, что творился на оккупированной территории в годы ВОВ. Как сказал, на английском читаю выборочно - просто местами интересно, одинаково ли в переводах с французского (вообще не знаю) на русский и английский. Именно в этом отрывке не заметил разночтений, чтобы придраться.

Повествование ведется от от лица высокообразованного офицера СС по имени Максимилиан Ауэ и охватывает период с начала военных действий в Советском Союзе до конца войны. Книга большая, разбита на несколько огромных глав, а те - на здоровенные абзацы со встроенными в них диалогами. Поэтому читать неудобно, но и не сложно - всё простыми словами описано, без стилистических выкрутасов.

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That same morning, Leutnant Reuter, an adjunct of Gilsa’s, came to my office: “We have a strange case that you should see. An old man, who presented himself here on his own. He’s talking about strange things and he says he’s Jewish. The Oberst suggested you interrogate him.”—“If he’s a Jew, he should be sent to the Kommando.”—“Maybe. But don’t you want to see him? I can assure you he’s surprising.” An orderly led the man in. He was a tall old man with a long white beard, still visibly vigorous; he wore a black cherkesska, a Caucasian peasant’s soft leather ankle boots tucked into rubber galoshes, and a handsome embroidered skullcap, purple, blue, and gold. I motioned to him to take a seat and, a little annoyed, asked the orderly: “He only speaks Russian, I suppose? Where is the Dolmetscher?” The old man looked at me with piercing eyes and said to me in strangely accented but understandable classical Greek: “You are an educated man, I see. You must know Greek.” Taken aback, I dismissed the orderly and replied: “Yes, I know Greek. And you? How do you come to speak this language?” He ignored my question. “My name is Nahum ben Ibrahim, from Magaramkend in the gubernatorya of Derbent. For the Russians, I took the name of Shamilyev, in honor of the great Shamil with whom my father fought. And you, what is your name?”—“My name is Maximilien. I come from Germany.”—“And who was your father?” I smiled: “Why does my father interest you, old man?”—“How am I supposed to know who I’m talking to if I don’t know who your father is?” His Greek, I heard now, contained unusual turns of phrase, but I managed to understand it. I told him my father’s name and he seemed satisfied. Then I questioned him: “If your father fought with Shamil, you must be very old.”—“My father died gloriously in Dargo after killing dozens of Russians. He was a very pious man, and Shamil respected his religion. He said that we, the Dagh Chufuti, believe in God better than the Muslims do. I remember the day he declared that in front of his murid, at the mosque in Vedeno.”—“That’s impossible! You couldn’t have known Shamil yourself. Show me your passport.” He held out a document to me and I quickly leafed through it. “See for yourself! It’s written here that you were born in 1866. Shamil was already a prisoner of the Russians then, in Kaluga.” He took the passport calmly from my hands and slipped it into an inner pocket. His eyes seemed to be sparkling with humor and mischief. “How do you think a poor chinovnik”—he used the Russian term—“from Derbent, a man who never even finished elementary school, could know when I was born? He guessed I was seventy when he wrote up this paper, without asking me anything. But I am much older. I was born before Shamil roused the tribes. I was already a man when my father died in Dargo, killed by those Russian dogs. I could have taken his place by Shamil’s side, but I was already studying the law, and Shamil told me that he had enough warriors, but that he needed scholars too.” I had absolutely no idea what to think: he would have had to be at least 120 years old. “And Greek?” I asked again. “Where did you learn that?”—“Daghestan isn’t Russia, young officer. Before the Russians killed them without mercy, the greatest scholars in the world lived in Daghestan, Muslims and Jews. People came from Arabia, from Turkestan, and even from China to consult them. And the Dagh Chufuti are not the filthy Jews from Russia. My mother’s language is Farsi, and everyone speaks Turkish. I learned Russian to do business, for as Rabbi Eliezer said, the thought of God does not fill the belly. Arabic I studied with the imams of the madrasas of Daghestan, and Greek, as well as Hebrew, from books. I never learned the language of the Jews of Poland, which is nothing but German, a language of Nyemtsi.”—“So you are truly a scholar.”—“Don’t make fun of me, meirakion. I too have read your Plato and your Aristotle. But I have read them along with Moses de Leon, which makes a big difference.” For some time I had been staring at his beard, square-cut, and especially his bare top lip. Something fascinated me: beneath his nose, his lip was smooth, without the usual hollow in the center, the philtrum. “How is it that your lip is like that? I’ve never seen that.” He rubbed his lip: “That? When I was born, the angel didn’t seal my lips. So I remember everything that happened before.”—“I don’t understand.”—“But you are well educated. It’s all written in the Book of the Creation of the Child, in the Lesser Midrashim. In the beginning, the man’s parents mate. That creates a drop into which God introduces the man’s spirit. Then the angel takes the drop in the morning to Paradise and at night to Hell, then he shows it where it will live on Earth and where it will be buried when God recalls the spirit he has sent. Then this is what is written. Excuse me if I recite badly, but I have to translate from the Hebrew, which you don’t know: But the angel always brings the drop back into the body of its mother and The Holy One, blessed be his name, closes the doors and bolts behind it. And The Holy One, blessed be his name, says to it: You will go up to there, and no further. And the child remains in his mother’s womb for nine months. Then it is written: The child eats everything the mother eats, drinks everything the mother drinks and does not eliminate any excrement, for if he did, it would make the mother die. And then it is written: And when the time comes when he must come into the world, the angel presents itself before him and says to him: Leave, for the time has come for your appearance in the world. And the spirit of the child replies: I have already said in front of the One who was there that I am satisfied with the world in which I have lived. And the angel replies: The world to which I am taking you is beautiful. And then: Despite yourself, you have been formed in the body of your mother, and despite yourself, you have been born to come into the world. Immediately the child begins to cry. And why does he cry? Because of the world in which he had lived and which he is forced to leave. And as soon as he has left, the angel gives him a blow on the nose and extinguishes the light above his head, he makes the child leave in spite of himself and the child forgets all he has seen. And as soon as he leaves, he begins to cry. This blow on the nose the book talks about is this: the angel seals the lips of the child and this seal leaves a mark. But the child does not forget right away. When my son was three years old, a long time ago, I surprised him one night near his little sister’s cradle: ‘Tell me about God,’ he was saying. ‘I’m beginning to forget.’ That is why man must relearn everything about God through study, and that is why men become mean and kill each other. But the angel had me come out without sealing my lips, as you see, and I remember everything.”—“So you remember the place where you will be buried?” I asked. He smiled wide: “That is why I came here to see you.”—“And is it far from here?”—“No. I can show you, if you like.” I got up and took my cap: “Let’s go.”

Going out, I asked Reuter for a Feldgendarm; he sent me to his company chief, who pointed to a Rottwachtmeister: “Hanning! Go with the Hauptsturmführer and do what he says.” Hanning took his helmet and shouldered his rifle; he must have been close on to forty; his large metal half-moon plate bounced on his narrow chest. “We’ll need a shovel, too,” I added. Outside, I turned to the old man: “Which way?” He raised his finger to the Mashuk, whose summit, caught in a cloud bank, looked as if it were spitting out smoke: “That way.” Followed by Hanning, we climbed the streets to the last one, which encircles the mountain; there the old man pointed to the right, toward the Proval. Pine trees lined the road and at one place a little path headed into the trees. “It’s that way,” said the old man.—“Are you sure you’ve never come here before?” I asked him. He shrugged. The path climbed and zigzagged and the slope was steep. The old man walked in front with a nimble, sure step; behind, the shovel on his shoulder, Hanning was panting heavily. When we emerged from the trees, I saw that the wind had chased the clouds away from the summit. A little farther on I turned around. The Caucasus barred the horizon. It had rained during the night, and the rain had finally swept away the ever-present summer haze, revealing the mountains, clear, majestic. “Stop daydreaming,” the old man said to me. I started walking again. We climbed for about half an hour. My heart was pounding wildly, I was out of breath, Hanning too; the old man seemed as fresh as a young tree. Finally we reached a kind of grassy terrace, a scant hundred meters or so from the top. The old man went forward and contemplated the view. This was the first time I really saw the Caucasus. Sovereign, the mountain chain unfurled like an immense sloping wall, to the very edge of the horizon; you felt as though if you squinted you could see the last mountains plunging into the Black Sea far to the right, and to the left into the Caspian. The hills were blue, crowned with pale-yellow, whitish ridges; the white Elbruz, an overturned bowl of milk, sat atop the peaks; a little farther away, the Kazbek loomed over Ossetia. It was as beautiful as a phrase of Bach. I looked and said nothing. The old man stretched out his hand to the east: “There, beyond the Kazbek, that’s Chechnya already, and afterward, that’s Daghestan.”—“And your grave, where is that?” He examined the flat terrace and took a few steps. “Here,” he said finally, stamping the ground with his foot. I looked at the mountains again: “This is a fine place to be buried, don’t you think?” I said. The old man had an immense, delighted smile: “Isn’t it?” I began to wonder if he wasn’t making fun of me. “You really saw it?”—“Of course!” he said indignantly. But I had the impression that he was laughing in his beard. “Then dig,” I said.—“What do you mean, ‘dig’? Aren’t you ashamed, meirakiske? Do you know how old I am? I could be the grandfather of your grandfather! I’d curse you rather than dig.” I shrugged and turned to Hanning, who was still waiting with the shovel. “Hanning. Dig.”—“Dig, Herr Hauptsturmführer? Dig what?”—“A grave, Rottwachtmeister. There.” He gestured with his head: “And the old man there? Can’t he dig?”—“No. Go on, start digging.” Hanning set his rifle and cap down in the grass and headed to the place indicated. He spat onto his hands and began to dig. The old man was looking at the mountains. I listened to the rustling of the wind, the vague rumor of the city at our feet; I could also hear the sound of the shovel hitting earth, the fall of the clumps of earth thrown out, Hanning’s panting. I looked at the old man: he was standing facing the mountains and the sun, and was murmuring something. I looked at the mountains again. The subtle and infinite variations of blue tinting the slopes looked as if they could be read like a long line of music, with the summits marking time. Hanning, who had taken off his neck plate and jacket, was digging methodically and was now at knee level. The old man turned to me with a gay look: “Is it coming along?” Hanning had stopped digging and was blowing, leaning on his shovel. “Isn’t that enough, Herr Hauptsturmführer?” he asked. The hole seemed a good length now but was only a few feet deep. I turned to the old man: “Is that enough for you?”—“You’re joking! You aren’t going to give me a poor man’s grave, me, Nahum ben Ibrahim! Come on, you’re not a nepios.”—“Sorry, Hanning. You have to keep digging.”—“Tell me, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” he asked me before going back to work, “what language are you speaking to him in? It’s not Russian.”—“No, it’s Greek.”—“He’s a Greek?! I thought he was a Jew?”—“Go on, keep digging.” He went back to work with a curse. After about twenty minutes he stopped again, panting hard. “You know, Herr Hauptsturmführer, usually there are two men to do this. I’m no longer young.”—“Pass me the shovel and get out of there.” I took off my cap and jacket and took Hanning’s place in the ditch. Digging wasn’t something I had much experience of. It took me some minutes to find my pace. The old man leaned over me: “You’re doing it very badly. It’s obvious you’ve spent your life in books. Where I come from, even the rabbis know how to build a house. But you’re a good boy. I did well to go to you.” I dug; the earth had to be thrown out quite high up now, a lot of it fell back into the hole. “Now is it all right?” I finally asked. “A little more. I want a grave that’s as comfortable as my mother’s womb.”—“Hanning,” I called, “come spell me.” The pit was now chest level and he had to help me climb out. I put my jacket and cap back on, and smoked while Hanning started digging again. I kept looking at the mountains; I couldn’t get enough of the view. The old man was looking too. “You know, I was disappointed I wasn’t to be buried in my valley, near the Samur,” he said. “But now I understand that the angel is wise. This is a beautiful place.”—“Yes,” I said. I glanced to the side: Hanning’s rifle was lying on the grass next to his cap, as if abandoned. When Hanning’s head had just cleared the ground, the old man declared he was satisfied. I helped Hanning get out. “And now?” I asked.—“Now, you have to put me inside. What? You think God is going to send me a thunderbolt?” I turned to Hanning: “Rottwachtmeister. Put your uniform back on and shoot this man.” Hanning turned red, spat on the ground, and swore. “What’s wrong?”—“With respect, Herr Hauptsturmführer, for special tasks, I have to have an order from my superior.”—“Leutnant Reuter put you at my disposal.” He hesitated: “Well, all right,” he finally said. He put his jacket, his big crescent neck plate, and his cap back on, brushed off his pants, and seized his rifle. The old man had positioned himself at the edge of the grave, facing the mountains, and was still smiling. Hanning shouldered his rifle and aimed it at the old man’s neck. Suddenly I was overcome with anguish. “Wait!” Hanning lowered his rifle and the old man turned his head toward me. “And my grave,” I asked him, “have you seen that too?” He smiled: “Yes.” I sucked in my breath, I must have turned pale, a vain anguish filled me: “Where is it?” He kept smiling: “That, I won’t tell you.”—“Fire!” I shouted to Hanning. Hanning raised his rifle and fired. The old man fell like a marionette whose string has been cut all at once. I went up to the grave and leaned over: he was lying at the bottom like a sack, his head turned aside, still smiling a little into his blood-splattered beard; his open eyes, turned toward the wall of earth, were also laughing. I was trembling. “Close that up,” I curtly ordered Hanning.

[Kind_Punk]

skullcap

Крайне удачное слово для черной круглой вязаной шапки ) Надо придумать русский аналог. Черепка? Черепанка? Черепуха? ))

[VictorB]

Надо придумать русский аналог

А ермолка-то (или кипа), чем плоха в контексте описания одежды северо-кавказского (в отрывке) иудея? )

[Kind_Punk]

ермолка-то (или кипа), чем плоха

Все норм ) Хотя, возможно, это была тюбетейка. Не уверен, что ермолки бывают "embroidered skullcap, purple, blue, and gold".

Мне слово понравилось ) К beanie оно тоже подходит, и я подумал, что оно отлично бы описывало черную круглую вязаную шапку с небезызвестным названием )