Джек Лондон - Hearts of Three [С англо-русским словарем]

‘Have you looked upon the pulque when it was sour?’ the Jefe quipped incredulously.

‘I have not had drink stronger than water since I last departed from San Antonio,’ was the reply. ‘And I shall go now to my house and drink a long long drink, and after that I shall bathe the filth from me, and put on garments whole and decent.’

Not immediately, as he proceeded, did Torres gain his house. A ragged urchin exclaimed out at sight of him, ran up to him, and handed him an envelope that he knew familiarly to be from the local government wireless, and that he was certain had been sent by Regan.

‘You are doing well. Imperative you keep party away from New York for three weeks more. Fifty thousand if you succeed’.

Borrowing a pencil from the boy, Torres wrote a reply on the back of the envelope:

‘Send the money. Party will never come back from mountains where he is lost’.

Two other occurrences delayed Torres’ long drink and bath. Just as he was entering the jewelry store of old Rodriguez Fernandez, he was intercepted by the old Maya priest with whom he had last parted in the Maya mountain. He recoiled as from an apparition, for sure he was that the old man was drowned in the Boom of the Gods. Like the Jefe at sight of Torres, so Torres, at sight of the priest, drew back in startled surprise.

‘Go away,’ he said. ‘Depart, restless old man. ‘You are a spirit. Thy body lies drowned and horrible in the heart of the mountain. You are an appearance, a ghost. Go away, nothing corporeal resides in this illusion of you, else would I strike you. You are a ghost. Depart at once. I should not like to strike a ghost.’

But the ghost seized his hands and clung to them with such beseeching corporality as to unconvince him.

‘Money,’ the ancient one babbled. ‘Let me have money. Lend me money. I will repay! I who know the secrets of the Maya treasure. My son is lost in the mountain with the treasure. The Gringos also are lost in the mountain. Help me to rescue my son. With him alone will I be satisfied, while the treasure shall all be yours. But we must take men, and much of the white man’s wonderful powder and tear a hole out of the mountain so that the water will run away. He is not drowned. He is a prisoner of the water in the room where stand the jewel-eyed Chia and Hzatzl. Their eyes of green and red alone will pay for all the wonderful powder in the world. So let me have the money with which to buy the wonderful powder.’

But Alvarez Torres was a strangely constituted man. Some warp or slant or idiosyncrasy of his nature always raised insuperable obstacles to his parting with money when such parting was unavoidable. And the richer he got the more positively this idiosyncrasy asserted itself.

‘Money!’ he asserted harshly, as he thrust the old priest aside and pulled open the door of Fernandez’s store. ‘Is it I who should have money. I who am all rags and tatters as a beggar. I have no money for myself, much less for you, old man. Besides, it was you, and not I, who led your son to the Maya mountain. On your head be it, not on mine, the death of your son who fell into the pit under the feet of Chia that was digged by your ancestors and not by mine.’

Again the ancient one clutched at him and yammered for money with which to buy dynamite. So roughly did Torres thrust him aside that his old legs failed to perform their wonted duty and he fell upon the flagstones.

The shop of Rodriguez Fernandez was small and dirty, and contained scarcely more than a small and dirty showcase that rested upon an equally small and dirty counter. The place was grimy with the undusted and unswept filth of a generation. Lizards and cockroaches crawled along the walls. Spiders webbed in every corner, and Torres saw, crossing the ceiling above, what made him step hastily to the side. It was a seven-inch centipede which he did not care to have fall casually upon his head or down his back between shirt and skin. And, when he appeared crawling out like a huge spider himself from some inner den of an unventilated cubicle, Fernandez looked like an Elizabethan stage-representation of Shylock [44] Shylock — Шейлок, ростовщик из пьесы Уильяма Шекспира «Венецианский купец», символ стяжательства, стремления к наживе. withal he was a dirtier Shylock than even the Elizabethan stage could have stomached.

The jeweler fawned to Torres and in a cracked falsetto humbled himself even beneath the dirt of his shop. Torres pulled from his pocket a haphazard dozen or more of the gems filched from the Queen’s chest, selected the smallest, and, without a word, while at the same time returning the rest to his pocket, passed it over to the jeweler.

‘I am a poor man,’ he cackled, the while Torres could not fail to see how keenly he scrutinized the gem.

He dropped it on the top of the show case as of little worth, and looked inquiringly at his customer. But Torres waited in a silence which he knew would compel the garrulity of covetous age to utterance.

‘Do I understand that the honorable Señor Torres seeks advice about the quality of the stone?’ the old jeweler finally quavered.

Torres did no more than nod curtly.

‘It is a natural gem. It is small. It, as you can see for yourself, is not perfect. And it is clear that much of it will be lost in the cutting.’

‘How much is it worth?’ Torres demanded with impatient bluntness.

‘I am a poor man,’ Fernandez reiterated.

‘I have not asked you to buy it, old fool. But now that you bring the matter up, how much will you give for it?’

‘As I was saying, craving your patience, honorable Señor, as I was saying, I am a very poor man. There are days when I cannot spend ten centavos for a morsel of spoiled fish. There are days when I cannot afford a sip of the cheap red wine I learned was tonic to my system when I was a lad, far from Barcelona, serving my apprenticeship in Italy. I am so very poor that I do not buy costly pretties.’

‘Not to sell again at a profit?’ Torres cut in.

‘If I am sure of my profit,’ the old man cackled. ‘Yes, then will I buy; but, being poor, I cannot pay more than little.’ He picked up the gem and studied it long and carefully. ‘I would give,’ he began hesitatingly, ‘I would give but, please, honorable Señor, know that I am a very poor man. This day only a spoonful of onion soup, with my morning coffee and a mouthful of crust, passed my lips—’

‘In God’s name, old fool, what will you give?’ Torres thundered.

‘Five hundred dollars — but I doubt the profit that will remain to me.’

‘Gold?’

‘Mex., [45] Mex. — мексиканское песо. ’ came the reply, which cut the offer in half and which Torres knew was a lie. ‘Of course, Mex., only Mex., all our transactions are in Mex.’

Despite his elation at so large a price for so small a gem, Torres play-acted impatience as he reached to take back the gem. But the old man jerked his hand away, loath to let go of the bargain it contained.

‘We are old’ friends,’ he cackled shrilly. ‘I first saw you, when, a boy, you came to San Antonio from Bocas del Toro. And, as between old friends, we will say the sum is gold.’

And Torres caught a sure but vague glimpse of the enormousness, as well as genuineness, of the Queen’s treasure which at some remote time the Lost Souls had ravished from its hiding place in the Maya Mountain.

‘Very good,’ said Torres, with a quick, cavalier action recovering the stone. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine. He wanted to borrow money from me on it. I can now lend him up to five hundred gold on it, thanks to your information. And I shall be grateful to buy for you, the next time we meet in the pulquería, a drink — yes, as many drinks as you can care to carry of the thin, red, tonic wine.’