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

And Torres began to lie. He had to lie, because he could not confess the shame of having had the gems taken away from him by the Solanos and the Morgans when they threw him out of the hacienda. And so convincingly did he lie that even the Jefe he convinced, while the judge, except in the matter of brands of strong liquor, accepted everything the Jefe wanted him to believe. In brief, shorn of the multitude of details that Torres threw in, his tale was that he was so certain of the jeweler’s under-appraisal that he had despatched the gems by special messenger to his agent in Colon with instructions to forward to New York to Tiffany’s for appraisement that might lead to sale.

As they emerged from the courtroom and descended the several steps that were flanked by single adobe pillars marred by bullet scars from previous revolutions, the Jefe was saying:

‘And so, needing the aegis of the law for our adventure after these gains, and, more than that, both of us loving our good friend the judge, we will let him in for a modest share of whatever we shall gain. He shall represent us in San Antonio while we are gone, and, if needs be, furnish us with the law’s protection.’

Now it happened that behind one of the pillars, hat pulled over his face, Yi Poon half-sat, half-reclined. Nor was he there by mere accident. Long ago he had learned that secrets of value, which always connoted the troubles of humans, were markedly prevalent around courtrooms, which were the focal points for the airing of such troubles when they became acute. One could never tell. At any moment a secret might leap at one or brim over to one. Therefore it was like a fisherman casting his line into the sea for Yi Poon to watch the defendant and the plaintiff, the witnesses for and against, and even the court hanger-on or casual-seeming onlooker.

So, on this morning, the one person of promise that Yi Poon had picked out was a ragged old peón who looked as if he had been drinking too much and yet would perish in his condition of reaction if he did not get another drink very immediately. Bleary-eyed he was, and red-lidded, with desperate resolve painted on all his haggard, withered lineaments. When the court-room had emptied, he had taken up his stand. outside on the steps close to a pillar.

And why? Yi Poon had asked himself. Inside remained only the three chief men of San Antonio the Jefe, Torres, and the judge. What connection between them, or any of them, and the drink-sodden creature that shook as if freezing in the scorching blaze of the direct sun-rays? Yi Poon did not know, but he did know that it was worth while waiting on a chance, no matter how remote, of finding out. So, behind the pillar, where no atom of shade protected him from the cooking sun which he detested, he lolled on the steps with all the impersonation of one placidly infatuated with sun-baths. The old peón tottered a step, swayed as if about to fall, yet managed to deflect Torres from his companions, who paused to wait for him on the pavement a dozen paces on, restless and hot-footed as if they stood on a grid, though deep in earnest conversation. And Yi Poon missed no word nor gesture, nor glint of eye nor shifting face-line, of the dialogue that took place between the grand Torres and the wreck of a peón. ‘What now?’ Torres demanded harshly.

‘Money, a little money, for the love of God, Señor, a little money,’ the ancient peón whined.

‘You have had your money,’ Torres snarled. ‘When I went away I gave you double the amount to last you twice as long. Not for two weeks yet is there a centavo due you.’

‘I am in debt,’ was the old man’s whimper, the while all the flesh of him quivered and trembled from the nerve ravishment of the drink so palpably recently consumed.

‘On the pulque slate at Peter and Paul’s,’ Torres, with a sneer, diagnosed unerringly.

‘On the pulque slate at Peter and Paul’s,’ was the frank acknowledgment. ‘And the slate is full. No more pulque can I get credit for. I am wretched and suffer a thousand torments without my pulque.’

‘You are a pig creature without reason!’

A strange dignity, as of wisdom beyond wisdom, seemed suddenly to animate the old wreck as he straightened up, for the nonce ceased from trembling, and gravely said:

‘I am old. There is no vigor left in the veins or the heart of me. The desires of my youth are gone. Not even may I labor with this broken body of mine, though well I know that labor is an easement and a forgetting. Not even may I labor and forget. Food is a distaste in my mouth and a pain in my belly. Women they are a pest that it is a vexation to remember ever having desired. Children I buried my last a dozen years gone. Religion it frightens me. Death I sleep with the terror of it. Pulque — ah, dear God! the one tickle and taste of living left to me!’

‘What if I drink over much? It is because I have much to forget, and have but a little space yet to linger in the sun, ere the Darkness, for my old eyes, blots out the sun forever.’

Impervious to the old man’s philosophy, Torres made an impatient threat of movement that he was going.

‘A few pesos, just a handful of pesos,’ the old peón pleaded.

‘Not a centavo,’ Torres said with finality.

‘Very well,’ said the old man with equal finality.

‘What do you mean?’ Torres rasped with swift suspicion.

‘Have you forgotten?’ was the retort, with such emphasis of significance as to make Yi Poon wonder for what reason Torres gave the peón what seemed a pension or an allowance.

‘I pay you, according to agreement, to forget,’ said. Torres.

‘I shall never forget that my old eyes saw you stab the Señor Alfaro Solano in the back,’ the peón replied.

Although he remained hidden and motionless in his posture of repose behind the pillar, Yi Poon metaphorically sat up. The Solanos were persons of place and wealth. That Torres should have murdered one of them was indeed a secret of price.

‘Beast! Pig without reason! Animal of the dirt!’ Torres’ hands clenched in his rage. ‘Because I am kind do you treat me thus! One blabbing of your tongue and I will send you to San Juan. You know what that means. Not only will you sleep with the terror of death, but never for a moment of waking will you be free of the terror of living as you stare upon the buzzards that will surely and shortly pick your bones. And there will be no pulque in San Juan. There is never any pulque in San Juan for the men I send there. So? Eh? I thought so. You will wait two weeks for the proper time when I shall again give you money. If you do not wait, then never, this side of your interment in the bellies of buzzards, will you drink pulque again.’

Torres whirled on his heel and was gone. Yi Poon watched him and his two companions go down the street, then rounded the pillar to find the old peón sunk down in collapse at his disappointment of not getting any pulque, groaning and moaning and making sharp little yelping cries, his body quivering as dying animals quiver in the final throes, his fingers picking at his flesh and garments as if picking off centipedes. Down beside him sat Yi Poon, who began a remarkable performance of his own. Drawing gold coins and silver ones from his pockets he began to count over his money with chink and clink that was mellow and liquid and that to the distraught peón’s ear was as the sound of the rippling and riffling of fountains of pulque

‘We are wise,’ Yi Poon told him in grandiloquent Spanish, still clinking the money, while the peón whined and yammered for the few centavos necessary for one drink of pulque. ‘We are wise, you and I, old man, and we will sit here and tell each other what we know about men and women, and life and love, and anger and sudden death, the rage red in the heart and the steel bitter cold in the back; and if you tell me what pleases me, then shall you drink pulque till your ears run cut with it, and your eyes are drowned in it. You like that pulque, eh? You like one drink now, now, soon, very quick?’