One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The machinery in the walls whistles, sighs, drops into a lower gear.

Then, till night, we eat and shower and go back to sit in the day room. Old Blastic, the oldest Vegetable, is holding his stomach and moaning. George (the black boys call him Ruba-dub[15]) is washing his hands in the drinking fountain. The Acutes sit and play cards and work at getting a picture on our TV set by carrying the set every place the cord will reach, in search of a good beam.

The speakers in the ceiling are still making music. The music from the speakers isn’t transmitted in on a radio beam is why the machinery don’t interfere. The music comes off a long tape from the Nurses’ Station, a tape we all know so well by heart that there don’t any of us consciously hear it except new men like McMurphy. He hasn’t got used to it yet. He’s dealing blackjack for cigarettes, and the speaker’s right over the card table. He’s pulled his cap way forward till he has to lean his head back and squint from under the brim to see his cards. He holds a cigarette between his teeth and talks around it like a stock auctioneer I saw once in a cattle auction in The Dalles.

“…hey-ya, hey-ya, come on, come on,” he says, high, fast; “I’m waitin’ on you suckers, you hit or you sit. Hit, you say? well well well and with a king up the boy wants a hit. Whaddaya know. So Comin’ at you and too bad, a little lady for the lad and he’s over the wall and down the road, up the hill and dropped his load. Comin’ at you, Scanlon, and I wish some idiot in that nurses’ hothouse would turn down that frigging music! Hooee! Does that thing play night and day, Harding? I never heard such a driving racket in my life.”

Harding gives him a blank look. “Exactly what noise is it you’re referring to, Mr. McMurphy?”

“That damned radio. Boy. It’s been going ever since I come in this morning. And don’t come on with some baloney that you don’t hear it.”

Harding cocks his ear to the ceiling. “Oh, yes, the so-called music. Yes, I suppose we do hear it if we concentrate, but then one can hear one’s own heartbeat too, if he concentrates hard enough.” He grins at McMurphy. “You see, that’s a recording playing up there, my friend. We seldom hear the radio. The world news might not be therapeutic. And we’ve all heard that recording so many times now it simply slides out of our hearing, the way the sound of a waterfall soon becomes an unheard sound to those who live near it. Do you think if you lived near a waterfall you could hear it very long?”

(I still hear the sound of the falls on the Columbia, always will – always – hear the whoop of Charley Bear Belly stabbed himself a big chinook, hear the slap of fish in the water, laughing naked kids on the bank, the women at the racks… from a long time ago.)

“Do they leave it on all the time, like a waterfall?” McMurphy says.

“Not when we sleep,” Cheswick says, “but all the rest of the time, and that’s the truth.”

“The hell with that. I’ll tell that coon over there to turn it off or get his fat little ass kicked!”

He starts to stand up, and Harding touches his arm. “Friend, that is exactly the kind of statement that gets one branded assaultive. Are you so eager to forfeit the bet?”

McMurphy looks at him. “That’s the way it is, huh? A pressure game? Keep the old pinch on?”

“That’s the way it is.”

He slowly lowers himself back into his seat, saying, “Horse muh-noo-ur.”

Harding looks about at the other Acutes around the card table. “Gentlemen, already I seem to detect in our redheaded challenger a most unheroic decline of his TV-cowboy stoicism.”

He looks at McMurphy across the table, smiling, McMurphy nods at him and tips his head back for the wink and licks his big thumb. “Well sir, of Professor Harding sounds like he’s getting cocky. He wins a couple of splits and he goes to comin’ on like a wise guy. Well well well; there he sits with a deuce showing and here’s a pack of Mar-boros says he backs down.… Whups, he sees me, okeedokee, Perfessor, here’s a trey, he wants another, gets another deuce, try for the big five, Perfessor? Try for that big double pay, or play it safe? Another pack says you won’t. Well well well, the Perfessor sees me, this tells the tale, too bad, another lady and the Perfessor flunks his exams…”

The next song starts up from the speaker, loud and clangy and a lot of accordion. McMurphy takes a look up at the speaker, and his spiel gets louder and louder to match it.

“…hey-ya hey-ya, okay, next, goddammit, you hit or you sit… comin at ya… !”

Right up to the lights out at nine-thirty.

* * *

I could of watched McMurphy at that blackjack table all night, the way he dealt and talked and roped them in and led them smack up to the point where they were just about

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Примечания

1

admission – зд. новенький

2

mothah = mother (Здесь и далее многие персонажи (как и сам рассказчик) употребляют разговорные выражения и изъясняются с грамматическими ошибками.)

3

pinochle – вид карточной игры

4

stompdown dadgum – самым отъявленным

5

Sitting Bull – Сидящий Бык (1834–1890) – вождь индейцев племени Сиу, воевавший с белыми. Убит полицией.

6

Kleenex – бумажная салфетка

7

EST (Electro-Shock Therapy) – электрошоковая терапия

8

Seconal – зд. снотворное

9

Punch and Judy acts – кукольные представления

10

in spades – разг. чрезвычайно

11

id – подсознание

12

superego – сверх-я (часть психики, являющаяся посредником между сознательными влечениями и социальными идеалами)

13

whambam – (вульг.) трах

14

get a bone up – (вульг.) отыметь

15

ruba-dub – (разг.) рукомойник