| Colonel Cargill had the next idea. | Полковник Карджилл высказал еще одно предположение: |
| 'Maybe I ought to phone Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and see if they know anything about it. | - Не позвонить ли мне в штаб двадцать седьмой воздушной армии? Может быть, они что-нибудь знают? |
| They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I'm pretty close to. | У них там служит некий Уинтергрин, я с ним довольно близко знаком. |
| He's the one who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix.' | Это он подсказал мне однажды, что наши тексты слишком многословны. |
| Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen told Cargill that there was no record at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a T. S. Eliot. | Экс-рядовой первого класса Уинтергрин сообщил полковнику Карджиллу, что штаб двадцать седьмой воздушной армии не располагает сведениями о Т.С. Эллиоте. |
| 'How's our prose these days?' Colonel Cargill decided to inquire while he had ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen on the phone. | - Ну а как наши тексты сегодня? - решил заодно поинтересоваться полковник Карджилл. |
| 'It's much better now, isn't it?' | - Намного короче, чем прежде, верно? |
| ' It's still too prolix,' ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied. | - Воды еще хватает, - ответил Уинтергрин. |
'It wouldn't surprise me if General Dreedle were behind the whole thing,' General Peckem confessed at last. 'Remember what he did to that skeet-shooting range?' General Dreedle had thrown open Colonel Cathcart's private skeet-shooting range to every officer and enlisted man in the group on combat duty. General Dreedle wanted his men to spend as much time out on the skeet-shooting range as the facilities and their flight schedule would allow. Shooting skeet eight hours a month was excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet. Dunbar loved
shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years. 'I think you're crazy,' was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar 's discovery. 'Who wants to know?' Dunbar answered. 'I mean it,' Clevinger insisted. 'Who cares?' Dunbar answered. 'I really do. I'll even go so far as to concede that life seems longer I-' '-is longer I-' '-is longer-Is longer? All right, is
longer if it's filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b-' 'Guess how fast?' Dunbar said suddenly. 'Huh?' 'They go,' Dunbar explained. 'Years.' 'Years.' 'Years,' said Dunbar.
'Years, years, years.' 'Clevinger, why don't you let Dunbar alone?' Yossarian broke in. 'Don't you realize the toll this is taking?' 'It's all right,' said Dunbar magnanimously. 'I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' 'And you shut up also,' Yossarian told Orr, who had begun to snigger. 'I was just thinking about that girl,' Orr said. 'That girl in Sicily. That girl in Sicily with the bald head.' 'You'd better shut up also,' Yossarian warned him. 'It's your fault,' Dunbar said to Yossarian. 'Why don't you let him snigger if he wants to? It's better than having him talking.' 'All right. Go ahead and snigger if
you want to.' 'Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?' Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. 'This long.' He snapped his fingers. 'A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man.' 'Old?' asked Clevinger with surprise. 'What are you talking about?' 'Old.' 'I'm not old.' 'You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?' Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. 'Well, maybe it is true,' - Нисколько не буду удивлен, если узнаю, что за всей этой историей стоит генерал Дридл, -признался наконец генерал Пеккем.
| Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. 'Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?' 'I do,' Dunbar told him. 'Why?' Clevinger asked. 'What else is there?' | |
| Chief White Halfoat Doc Daneeka lived in a splotched gray tent with Chief White Halfoat, whom he feared and despised. | 5. Вождь Белый Овес Доктор Дейника делил пятнистую от грязи палатку с Вождем Белый Овес, которого презирал и боялся. |
| 'I can just picture his liver,' Doc Daneeka grumbled. | - Он у меня сидит в печенках, - ворчал Дейника. |
| 'Picture my liver,' Yossarian advised him. | - Ты бы лучше поинтересовался моей печенкой, -советовал Йоссариан. |
| 'There's nothing wrong with your liver.' | - Твоя печенка в порядке. |
| 'That shows how much you don't know,' Yossarian bluffed, and told Doc Daneeka about the troublesome pain in his liver that had troubled Nurse Duckett and Nurse Cramer and all the doctors in the hospital because it wouldn't become jaundice and wouldn't go away. | - Вот сразу и видно, как мало ты смыслишь, -пытался взять его на пушку Йоссариан. Он поведал доктору о болях в области печени, которые так встревожили сестру Даккит, сестру Крэмер и всех врачей в госпитале, поскольку желтухи не было, а боли тем не менее не проходили. |
| Doc Daneeka wasn't interested. | Доктор Дейника не проявил интереса к этому сообщению. |
| 'You think you've got troubles?' he wanted to know. | - И это ты называешь неприятностями? - сказал он. |
| 'What about me? You should've been in my office the day those newlyweds walked in.' 'What newlyweds?' 'Those newlyweds that walked into my office one day. Didn't I ever tell you about them? She was lovely.' | - А что же в таком случае сказать обо мне? |
| So was Doc Daneeka's office. | У доктора Дейники был когда-то свой медицинский кабинет. |
| He had decorated his waiting room with goldfish and one of the finest suites of cheap furniture. | Приемную украшали золотые рыбки и гарнитур мебели, столь же очаровательный, сколь и дешевый. |