Эпитеты и их перевод

     "Ralph-"

     The fat  boy  lowered himself over  the terrace and sat down carefully, using the edge as a seat.

     "I'm sorry I been such a time. Them fruit-"

     He  wiped his  glasses and adjusted them on his  button nose. The frame had  made a deep, pink "V" on the  bridge.  He looked critically at  Ralph's golden body and then down at his own clothes. He laid a hand on the end of a zipper that extended down his chest.

     "My auntie-"

     Then  he  opened  the  zipper  with   decision  and  pulled  the  whole wind-breaker over his head.

     "There!"

     Ralph looked at him sidelong and said nothing.

     "I  expect we'll want to know all  their names," said the fat boy, "and make a list. We ought to have a meeting."

     Ralph did not take the hint so the fat boy was forced to continue.

     "I don't care  what  they call me," he said confidentially, "so long as they don't call me what they used to call me at school.'

     Ralph was faintly interested.

     "What was that?"

     The fat boy glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward Ralph.

     He whispered.

     "They used to call me 'Piggy.' "

     Ralph shrieked with laughter. He jumped up.

     "Piggy! Piggy!"

     "Ralph-please!"

     Piggy clasped his hands in apprehension.

     "I said I didn't want-"

     "Piggy! Piggy!"

     Ralph  danced  out into the hot air of the beach and then returned as a fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Piggy.

     "Sche-aa-ow!"

     He dived in the sand at Piggy's feet and lay there laughing.

     "Piggy!"

     Piggy  grinned  reluctantly,  pleased despite himself at even this much recognition.

     "So long as you don't tell the others-"

     Ralph giggled into the  sand. The expression of pain and  concentration returned to Piggy's face.

     "Half a sec'."

     He  hastened back into the forest. Ralph stood up  and trotted along to the right.

     Here the  beach was interrupted abruptly by  the square  motif  of  the landscape;  a  great  platform  of pink granite thrust  up  uncompromisingly through forest and  terrace  and sand and lagoon to make a raised jetty four feet high. The top of this was covered with a  thin layer of soil and coarse grass and shaded  with young palm trees. There was not  enough soil for them to  grow to any height and  when they  reached perhaps twenty feet they fell and  dried,  forming a criss-cross pattern of trunks, very convenient to sit on. The palms that still stood made  a green roof, covered  on the underside with a quivering tangle of reflections from the lagoon. Ralph hauled himself onto this  platform, noted the coolness and shade, shut one eye, ana decided that the shadows on his body  were  really green. He  picked his way  to the

seaward edge of  the  platform and stood looking down into the water. It was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of  tropical  weed and coral.  A school  of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither. Ralph spoke to himself, sounding the bass strings of delight.

     "Whizzoh!"

     Beyond  the  platform there  was  more  enchantment. Some act of  God-a typhoon  perhaps,  or  the storm  that had  accompanied his  own arrival-had banked sand  inside the lagoon so  that there was  a long, deep  pool in the beach with a high ledge of pink granite at the  further end. Ralph  had been deceived before now by the specious appearance of depth in a  beach pool and he approached this one preparing to be disappointed. But the island ran true

to form and the incredible  pool, which clearly was only invaded by  the sea at high tide, was so  deep at one end as to be dark green.  Ralph  inspected the whole thirty yards  carefully and then plunged in.  The water was warmer than his blood and he might have been swimming in a huge bath.

     Piggy appeared again, sat on the rocky ledge, and watched Ralph's green and white body enviously.

     "You can't half swim."

     "Piggy."

     Piggy took off his shoes and socks, ranged them carefully on the ledge, and tested the water with one toe.

     "It's hot!"

     "What did you expect?"

     "I didn't expect nothing. My auntie-"

     "Sucks to your auntie!"

     Ralph  did a surface dive  and swam under water with his eyes open; the sandy edge of the pool loomed up like a hillside. He  turned  over,  holding his nose, and a golden light danced and shattered just  over his face. Piggy was  looking  determined and began to take off his shorts. Presently he  was palely and fatly naked. He tiptoed down the sandy side of  the pool, and sat there up to his neck in water smiling proudly at Ralph.

     "Aren't you going to swim?"

     Piggy shook his head.

     "I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma-"

     "Sucks to your ass-mar!"

     Piggy bore this with a sort of humble patience.

     "You can't half swim well."

     Ralph paddled backwards down the slope,  immersed  his mouth and blew a jet of water into the air. Then he lifted his chin and spoke.

     "I could swim when I was five. Daddy taught me. He's a commander in the Navy. When he gets leave hell come and rescue us. What's your father?"

     Piggy flushed suddenly.

     "My dad's dead," he said quickly, "and my mum-"

     He took off  his glasses and looked  vainly for something with which to clean them.

     "I used to live with my auntie.  She kept  a candy store. I used to get ever so many candies. As many as I liked. When'll your dad rescue us?"

     "Soon as he can."

     Piggy  rose  dripping  from  the water  and stood  naked, cleaning  his glasses with a sock.  The only sound that reached them now  through the heat of the morning was the long, grinding roar of the breakers on the reef.

     "How does he know we're here?"

     Ralph  lolled  in  the water. Sleep  enveloped him  like  the swathing mirages that were wrestling with the brilliance of the lagoon.

     "How does he know we're here?"

     Because, thought Ralph, because, because. The roar from the reef became very distant.

     "They'd tell him at the airport."

     Piggy shook his  head, put on his flashing glasses and looked  down  at Ralph.

     "Not them. Didn't you  hear what the  pilot said?  About the atom bomb?

They're all dead."

     Ralph  pulled  himself  out  of  the  water,  stood  facing  Piggy, and considered this unusual problem.

     Piggy persisted.

     "This an island, isn't it?"

     "I climbed a rock," said Ralph slowly, "and I think this is an island."

     "They're all dead," said  Piggy,  "an'  this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don t know-"

     His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist.

     "We may stay here till we die."

     With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.

     "Get my clothes," muttered Ralph. "Along there."

     He trotted  through the sand,  enduring the  sun's enmity,  crossed the platform and found his scattered clothes. To put  on a  grey shirt once more was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge  of the platform and sat in the  green shade on a  convenient trunk.  Piggy hauled himself up,  carrying most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat  carefully on a fallen trunk near the little cliff  that fronted  the lagoon; and the tangled reflections quivered over him.

     Presently he spoke.

     "We got to find the others. We got to do something."

     Ralph said  nothing. Here was a  coral island. Protected  from the sun, ignoring Piggy's   ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.

     Piggy insisted.

     "How many of us are there?"

     Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.

     "I don't know."

     Here and there,  little breezes crept over  the polished waters beneath the  haze  of heat. When these breezes reached  the platform the palm fronds would whisper, so  that spots of blurred  sunlight slid over their bodies or moved like bright, winged things in the shade.

     Piggy  looked  up  at  Ralph.  All  the shadows  on  Ralph's face  were reversed; green above, bright below from the  lagoon. A blur of sunlight was crawling across his hair.

     "We got to do something."

     Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined out never fully realized  place leaping into  real life.  Ralph's lips parted in a delighted smile  and  Piggy, taking this smile  to himself  as a  mark of recognition, laughed with pleasure.

     "If ft really is an island-"

     "What's that?"

     Ralph had  stopped smiling and was pointing  into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.

     "A stone."

     "No. A shell"

     Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement

     "S'right. It's a shell! I  seen one like that before. On someone's back

wall A  conch he  called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come.

It's ever so valuable-"

     Near  to  Ralph's  elbow  a  palm sapling leaned  out  over the lagoon. Indeed, the weight was already pulling a lump from the poor soil and soon it would fall. He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water, while the  brilliant  fish flicked away on  this  side  and  that.  Piggy  leaned dangerously.

     "Careful! You'll break it-"

     "Shut up."

Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a worthy plaything; but the vivid phantoms of his day-dream still interposed between him and Piggy, who in this context was an irrelevance. The palm sapling, bending, pushed the shell across the weeds. Ralph used one hand as a fulcrнum and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping, and Piggy could make a grab.

     Now the shell was no longer a thing seen but not to be touched, Ralph

too became excited. Piggy babbled:

     "-a conch; ever so expensive. I bet if you wanted to buy one, you'd have to pay pounds and pounds and pounds -he had it on his garden wall, and my auntie-"

     Ralph took the shell from Piggy and a little water ran down his arm. In color the shell was deep cream, touched here and there with fading pink. Between the point, worn away into a little hole, and the pink lips of the mouth, lay eighteen inches of shell with a slight spiral twist and covered with a delicate, embossed pattern. Ralph shook sand out of the deep tube.

     "-mooed like a cow," he said. "He had some white stones too, an' a bird cage with a green parrot. He didn't blow the white stones, of course, an` he said-" Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in Ralph's hands.

     "Ralph!"

     Ralph looked up.

     "We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us-"

     He beamed at Ralph.

     "That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out of the water?''

     Ralph pushed back his fair hair.

     "How did your friend blow the conch?"

     "He kind of spat," said Piggy. "My auntie wouldn't let me blow on account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here." Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. "You try, Ralph. You'll call the others."

     Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained silent.

     "He kind of spat."

     Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter.

     "He blew from down here."

     Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the  forest and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds  of birds  rose from  the  tree-tops, and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.

     Ralph took the shell away from his lips.

    "Gosh!"

     His ordinary voice sounded like a  whisper  after the harsh note of the conch. He laid the  conch against his lips, took a deep breath and blew once more. The note  Doomed again: and then  at  his firmer pressure,  the  note, fluking up an octave, became a  strident blare more penetrating than before. Piggy  was shouting  something, his face pleased, his glasses  flashing. The birds cried,  small  animals  scuttered.  Ralph's  breath failed;  the  note dropped the octave, became a low wubber, was a rush of air.

     The  conch was  silent, a  gleaming  tusk; Ralph's  face was dark  with breathlessness and the air  over  the island  was full  of  bird-clamor  and echoes ringing.

     "I bet you can hear that for miles."

     Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts.

     Piggy exclaimed: "There's one!"

     A  child had appeared among the palms,  about a hundred yards along the beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes torn, his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His  trousers had been lowered for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way. He jumped off the palm  terrace  into the sand and his trousers fell  about his ankles; he stepped out.  of them  and trotted to the platform. Piggy  helped  him  up. Meanwhile Ralph continued to  blow  till  voices  shouted in  the forest The small boy squatted in front of Ralph, looking up brightly and vertically. As he  received the reassurance of something purposeful  being done he began to look satisfied, and his only clean digit, a pink thumb, slid into his mouth.

     Piggy leaned down to him.

     "What's yer name?"

     "Johnny."

     Piggy muttered the name to  himself and  then shouted it to  Ralph, who was not interested because he was still blowing. His face was dark with  the violent pleasure  of making  this stupendous noise, and his heart was making the stretched shirt shake. The shouting in the forest was nearer.

     Signs  of  life  were visible  now  on the beach. The  sand,  trembling beneath the heat haze, concealed many  figures in its miles of  length; boys were making their way toward the platform through the hot,  dumb sand. Three small children, no older than Johnny, appeared from startlingly dose at hand where they had been  gorging fruit in the forest A dark little boy, not much younger  than  Piggy,  parted  a  tangle  of  undergrowth, walked  on to the platform, and  smiled cheerfully at everybody. More and more  of  them came. Taking their cue from the innocent Johnny, they sat down on the fallen  palm trunks  and waited. Ralph continued to blow short, penetrating blasts. Piggy moved among  the crowd,  asking  names  and  frowning to remember them.  The children gave  him the same simple  obedience that they had given to the men with  megaphones.  Some  were  naked  and  carrying  their  clothes;  others half-naked, or more or  less dressed, in  school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed or jerseyed. There  were badges, mottoes even, stripes of  color in stockings and pullovers. Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade;  heads brown,  fair,  black,  chestnut, sandy,  mouse-colored;  heads muttering, whispering, heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated. Something was being done.