Тесный угол

W. Somerset MAUGHAM





                THE NARROW CORNER





 awuisffi

   CLASSICAL LITERATURE








ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО

Сашгг-Петербург

2009

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93
    М74















     Моэм У. Сомерсет
М 74 Тесный угол: Книга для чтения на английском языке. — СПб.: Антология, КАРО, 2009. — 256 с. — (Серия «Classical Literature»).

     ISBN 978-5-9925-0410-1

         Уильям Сомерсет Моэм (1874-1965) — известный английский писатель, врач по образованию. В годы Первой мировой войны служил в разведке.
         «Тесный угол» (1932) — повесть о южных морях.
         В книге представлен неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93



ISBN 978-5-9925-0410-1

© Антология, 2005
© КАРО, 2005

                                Short, therefore, is man’s life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells







        PREFACE

  The characters of fiction are strange fish. They come into your mind. They grow. They acquire suitable characteristics. An environment surrounds them. You think of them now and again. Sometimes they become an obsession so that you can think of nothing else. Then you write of them and for you they cease to be. It is odd that someone who has occupied a place, often only in the background of your thoughts, but also often in the very centre of them, who then perhaps for months has lived with you all the waking hours of the day and often in your dreams, should slip your consciousness so completely that you can remember neither his name nor what he looks like. You may even forget that he ever existed. But on occasion it does not happen like that. A character whom you had thought you were done with, a character to whom you had given small heed, does not vanish into oblivion. You find yourself thinking of him again. It is often exasperating, for you have had your will of him and he is no longer of any use to you. What is the good of his forcing his presence on you? He is a gate-crasher whom you do not want at your party. He is eating the food and drinking the wine prepared for others. You have no room for him. You must

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concern yourself with the people who are more important to you. But does he care? Unmindful of the decent sepulchre you have prepared for him, he goes on living obstinately; indeed, he betrays an uncanny activity, and one day to your surprise he has forced his way to the forefront of your thoughts and you cannot help but give him your attention.
   The reader of this novel will find Dr Saunders in a brief sketch in On a Chinese Screen. He was devised in order to act his part in the little story called The Stranger. I had space there to draw him but in a few lines and I never expected to think of him again. There was no reason why he, rather than any other of the many persons who made an appearance in that book, should go on living. He took the matter into his own hands.
   And Captain Nichols was introduced to the reader in The Moon and Sixpence. He was suggested by a beachcomber I met in the South Seas. But in his case I was conscious soon after I had finished that book that I was not finished with him. I went on thinking about him and when the manuscript came back from the typist and I was correcting errors, a little piece of his conversation struck me. I could not but think that here was the idea for a novel and the more I thought of it the more I liked it. When the proofs at last reached me I had made up my mind to write it and so cut out the passage in question. It ran as follows:
   ‘About other parts of his career he was fortunately more communicative. He had smuggled guns into South America and opium into China. He had been engaged in the blackbird business in the Solomon Islands and showed a scar on his forehead as the result of a wound some scoundrelly nigger had given him who did not un
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derstand his philanthropic intentions. His chief enterprise was a long cruise he had taken in the Eastern seas, and his recollections of this formed an unfailing topic of his conversation. It appeared that some man in Sydney had been unlucky enough to commit a murder and his friends were anxious to keep him out of harm’s way for a time, so Captain Nichols was approached. He was given twelve hours to buy a schooner and find a crew, and the following night, a little way down the coast, the interesting passenger was brought on board.
   ‘ “I got a thousand pounds for that job, money down, paid in gold,” said Captain Nichols. “We had a wonderful trip. We went all through the Celebes and round about the islands of the Borneo Archipelago. They’re wonderful those islands. Talk of beauty, vegetation, you know, and all that sort of thing. Shooting whenever you fancy it. Of course we kept out of the beaten track.”
   ‘ “What sort of man was your passenger?” I asked.
   ‘ “Good fellow. One of the best. Fine card player too. We played ecarte every day for a year and by the end of the year he’d got all the thousand pounds back again. I’m a pretty good card player myself and I kept my eyes skinned too.”
   ‘ “Did he go back to Australia eventually?”
   ‘ “That was the idea. He’d got some friends there and they reckoned as how they’d square his little trouble in a couple of years.”
   < «Т   »
     I see.
   ‘ “It looked as if I was going to be made the goat.”
   ‘Captain Nichols paused for a moment and his lively eyes seemed strangely veiled. A sort of opaqueness covered them.
   ‘ “Poor fellow, he fell overboard one night off the coast of Java. I guess the sharks did the rest. He was a fine card

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player, one of the best I ever saw? The Captain nodded reflectively. “I sold the schooner at Singapore. What with the money I got for that and the thousand pounds in gold I didn’t do so badly after all.” ’
    This then was the incident that gave me the idea for this novel, but it was not till twelve years later that I began to write it.

        Chapter I




   All this happened a good many years ago.


        Chapter II




   Dr Saunders yawned. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The day lay before him and he had nothing in the world to do. He had already seen a few patients. There was no doctor on the island and on his arrival such as had anything the matter with them seized the opportunity to consult him. But the place was not unhealthy and the ailments he was asked to cure were chronic, and he could do little; or they were trifling, and responded quickly to simple remedies. Dr Saunders had practised for fifteen years in Fu-chou and had acquired a great reputation among the Chinese for his skill in dealing with the ills that affect the eye, and it was to remove a cataract for a rich Chinese merchant that he had come to Takana. This was an island in the Malay Archipelago, a long way down, and the distance from Fu-chou was so great that at first he had refused to go. But the Chinese, Kim Ching by name, was himself a native of that city and two of his sons lived there. He was well acquainted with Dr Saunders, and on his periodical visits to

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Fu-chou had consulted him on his failing sight. He had heard how the doctor, by what looked like a miracle, had caused the blind to see, and when in due course he found himself in such a state that he could only tell day from night, he was prepared to trust no one else to perform the operation which he was assured would restore his sight. Dr Saunders had advised him to come to Fu-chou when certain symptoms appeared, but he had delayed, fearing the surgeon’s knife, and when at last he could no longer distinguish one object from another the long journey made him nervous and he bade his sons persuade the doctor to come to him.
    Kim Ching had started life as a coolie, but by hard work and courage, aided by good luck, cunning, and unscrupulousness, he had amassed a large fortune. At this time, a man of seventy, he owned large plantations on several islands; his own schooners fished for pearl, and he traded extensively in all the products of the Archipelago. His sons, themselves middle-aged men, went to see Dr Saunders. They were his friends and patients. Two or three times a year they invited him to a grand dinner, when they gave him bird’s-nest soup, shark fins, beche-de-mer¹, and many other delicacies; singing girls engaged at a high price entertained the company with their performances; and everyone got tight. The Chinese liked Dr Saunders. He spoke the dialect of Fu-chou with fluency. He lived, not like the other foreigners in the settlement, but in the heart of the Chinese city; he stayed there year in and year out and they had become accustomed to him. They knew that he smoked opium, though with moderation, and they knew what else there was to be known about him. He seemed to them a sensible man. It did not displease them that the foreigners in the community turned a cold shoulder on him. He never went to the club but to read the papers when

    ¹ b&che-de-mer — (фр.) трепанг

the mail came in, and was never invited to dinner by them; they had their own English doctor and called in Dr Saunders only when he was away on leave. But when they had anything the matter with their eyes they put their disapproval in their pockets and came down for treatment to the shabby little Chinese house over the river where Dr Saunders dwelt happily amid the stenches of a native city. They looked about them with distaste as they sat in what was both the doctor’s consulting-room and parlour. It was furnished in the Chinese style but for a roll-top desk and a couple of rocking-chairs much the worse for wear. On the discoloured walls Chinese scrolls, presented by grateful patients, contrasted oddly with the sheet of cardboard on which were printed in different sizes and combinations the letters of the alphabet. It always seemed to them that there hung about the house faintly the acrid scent of opium.
    But this the sons of Kim Ching did not notice, and if they had it would not have incommoded them. After the usual compliments had passed and Dr Saunders had offered them cigarettes from a green tin, they set forth their business. Their father had bidden them say that now, too old and too blind to make the journey to Fu-chou, he desired Dr Saunders to come to Takana and perform the operation which he had said two years before would be necessary. What would be his fee? The doctor shook his head. He had a large practice in Fu-chou and it was out of the question for him to absent himself for any length of time. He saw no reason why Kim Ching should not come there; he could come on one of his own schooners. If that did not suit him he could get a surgeon from Macassar, who was perfectly competent to perform the operation. The sons of Kim Ching, talking very volubly, explained that their father knew that there was no one who could do the miracles that Dr Saunders could, and he was

THE NARROW CORNER

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   determined that no one else should touch him. He was prepared to double the sum that the doctor reckoned he could earn at Fu-chou during the period he would be away. Dr Saunders continued to shake his head. Then the two brothers looked at one another and the elder took out from an inner pocket a large and shabby wallet of black leather bulging with the notes of the Chartered Bank. He spread them out before the doctor, a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars; the doctor smiled and his sharp, bright eyes twinkled; the Chinese continued to spread out the notes; the two brothers were smiling too, ingratiatingly, but they keenly watched the doctor’s face and presently they were conscious of a change in his expression. He did not move. His eyes kept their tolerant good humour, but they felt in their bones that his interest was aroused. Kim Chings elder son paused and looked inquiringly into his face.
      T can’t leave all my patients for three solid months,’ said the doctor. ‘Let Kim Ching get one of the Dutch doctors from Macassar or Amboyna. There’s a fellow at Amboyna who’s quite all right.’
      The Chinese did not reply. He put more notes on the table. They were hundred-dollar bills and he arranged them in little packets of ten. The wallet bulged less. He laid the packets side by side and at last there were ten of them.
      ‘Stop,’ said the doctor. ‘That’ll do.’

        Chapter III


    It was a complicated journey. From Fu-chou he went on a Chinese vessel to Manila in the Philippines, and from there, after waiting a few days, by cargo boat to Macassar.

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