chest to ribbons.
Carlo went back into the bedroom and when he came out he was holding his belt
doubled in his hand. "Clean it up," he said and there was no mistaking the menace in
his voice. She stood there not moving and he swung the belt against her heavily padded
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hips, the leather stinging but not really hurting. Connie retreated to the kitchen cabinets
and her hand went into one of the drawers to haul out the long bread knife. She held it
ready.
Carlo laughed. "Even the female Corleones are murderers," he said. He put the belt
down on the kitchen table and advanced toward her. She tried a sudden lunge but her
pregnant heavy body made her slow and he eluded the thrust she aimed at his groin in
such deadly earnest. He disarmed her easily and then he started to slap her face with a
slow medium-heavy stroke so as not to break the skin. He hit her again and again as
she retreated around the kitchen table trying to escape him and he pursued her into the
bedroom. She tried to bite his hand and he grabbed her by the hair to lift her head up.
He slapped her face until she began to weep like a little girl, with pain and humiliation.
Then he threw her contemptuously onto the bed. He drank from the bottle of whiskey
still on the night table. He seemed very drunk now, his light blue eyes had a crazy glint
in them and finally Connie was truly afraid.
Carlo straddled his legs apart and drank from the bottle. He reached down and
grabbed a chunk (толстый кусок, ломоть) of her pregnant heavy thigh in his hand. He
squeezed very hard, hurting her and making her beg for mercy. "You're fat as a pig," he
said with disgust and walked out of the bedroom.
Thoroughly frightened and cowed, she lay in the bed, not daring to see what her
husband was doing in the other room. Finally she rose and went to the door to peer into
the living room. Carlo had opened a fresh bottle of whiskey and was sprawled on the
sofa. In a little while he would drink himself into sodden (промокший, пропитанный;
отупевший /напр. от усталости, пьянства/) sleep and she could sneak into the kitchen
and call her family in Long Beach. She would tell her mother to send someone out here
to get her. She just hoped Sonny didn't answer the phone, she knew it would be best to
talk to Tom Hagen or her mother.
It was nearly ten o'clock at night when the kitchen phone in Don Corleone's house
rang. It was answered by one of the Don's bodyguards who dutifully turned the phone
over to Connie's mother. But Mrs. Corleone could hardly understand what her daughter
was saying, the girl was hysterical yet trying to whisper so that her husband in the next
room would not hear her. Also her face had become swollen because of the slaps, and
her puffy lips thickened her speech. Mrs. Corleone made a sign to the bodyguard that
he should call Sonny, who was in the living room with Tom Hagen.
Sonny came into the kitchen and took the phone from his mother. "Yeah, Connie," he
said.
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Connie was so frightened both of her husband and of what her brother would do that
her speech became worse. She babbled, "Sonny, just send a car to bring me home, I'll
tell you then, it's nothing, Sonny. Don't you come. Send Tom, please, Sonny. It's
nothing, I just want to come home."
By this time Hagen had come into the room. The Don was already under a sedated
sleep in the bedroom above and Hagen wanted to keep an eye on Sonny in all crises.
The two interior bodyguards were also in the kitchen. Everybody was watching Sonny
as he listened on the phone.
There was no question that the violence in Sonny Corleone's nature rose from some
deep mysterious physical well. As they watched they could actually see the blood
rushing to his heavily corded neck, could see the eyes film with hatred, the separate
features of his face tightening, growing pinched, then his face took on the grayish hue of
a sick man fighting off some sort of death, except that the adrenalin pumping through
his body made his hands tremble. But his voice was controlled, pitched low, as he told
his sister, "You wait there. You just wait there." He hung up the phone.
He stood there for a moment quite stunned with his own rage, then he said, "The
fucking sonofabitch, the fucking sonofabitch." He ran out of the house.
Hagen knew the look on Sonny's face, all reasoning power had left him. At this
moment Sonny was capable of anything. Hagen also knew that the ride into the city
would cool Sonny off, make him more rational. But that rationality might make him even
more dangerous, though the rationality would enable him to protect himself against the
consequences of his rage. Hagen heard the car motor roaring into life and he said to the
two bodyguards, "Go after him."
Then he went to the phone and made some calls. He arranged for some men of
Sonny's regime living in the city to go up to Carlo Rizzi's apartment and get Carlo out of
there. Other men would stay with Connie until Sonny arrived. He was taking a chance
(рисковал), thwarting (thwart – банка на гребной шлюпке; поперечный; to thwart –
перечить; /по/мешать исполнению, /здесь/ раздражая, действуя ему «против
шерсти») Sonny, but he knew the Don would back him up. He was afraid that Sonny
might kill Carlo in front of witnesses. He did not expect trouble from the enemy. The
Five Families had been quiet too long and obviously were looking for peace of some
kind.
By the time Sonny roared out of the mall in his Buick, he had already regained, partly,
his senses. He noted the two bodyguards getting into a car to follow him and approved.
He expected no danger, the Five Families had quit counterattacking, were not really
fighting anymore.
He had grabbed his jacket in the foyer and there was a gun in a secret dashboard
(щиток, приборная доска) compartment (отделение) of the car, the car registered in
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the name of a member of his regime, so that he personally could not get into any legal
trouble. But he did not anticipate needing any weapon. He did not even know what he
was going to do with Carlo Rizzi.
Now that he had a chance to think, Sonny knew he could not kill the father of an
unborn child, and that father his sister's husband. Not over a domestic spat (небольшая
ссора; легкий удар, шлепок; to spat – похлопать, пошлепать; побраниться; слегка
поссориться). Except that it was not just a domestic spat. Carlo was a bad guy and
Sonny felt responsible that his sister had met the bastard through him.
The paradox in Sonny's violent nature was that he could not hit a woman and had
never done so. That he could not harm a child or anything helpless. When Carlo had
refused to fight back against him that day, it had kept Sonny from killing him; complete
submission disarmed his violence. As a boy, he had been truly tenderhearted. That he
had become a murderer as a man was simply his destiny.
But he would settle this thing once and for all, Sonny thought, as he headed the Buick
toward the causeway (мостовая, мощеная дорожка, тротуар; дамба, гать) that would
take him over the water from Long Beach to the parkways on the other side of Jones
Beach. He always used this route when he went to New York. There was less traffic.
He decided he would send Connie home with the bodyguards and then he would have