Why couldn't anybody understand that he was not really a freak but a normal, lonely adult trying to lead a normal, lonely adult life?

Почему никто не хочет понять, что на самом деле он вовсе не чудак, а нормальный, взрослый, но одинокий человек, пытающийся вести нормальную жизнь одинокого взрослого человека?

If they pricked him, didn't he bleed?

Разве из него не заструится кровь, если его уколоть ножом?

And if he was tickled, didn't he laugh?

Разве он не засмеется, если его пощекотать?

It seemed never to have occurred to them that he, just as they, had eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses and affections, that he was wounded by the same kind of weapons they were, warmed and cooled by the same breezes and fed by the same kind of food, although, he was forced to concede, in a different mess hall for each successive meal.

Кажется, им никогда не приходило в голову, что у него, как и у них, есть глаза, руки, внутренние органы, рост, вес, чувства, привязанности! Разве его ранит не то же оружие, что ранит их, разве его не так же согревает лето и знобит зима, как остальных людей, и разве не та же пища питает его, даже если его вынуждают питаться по очереди в разных столовых?

The only person who did seem to realize he had feelings was Corporal Whitcomb, who had just managed to bruise them all by going over his head to Colonel Cathcart with his proposal for sending form letters of condolence home to the families of men killed or wounded in combat.

Единственный, кто действительно понимал, что у капеллана есть нервы, был капрал Уитком, который успешно действовал на нервы капеллану тем, что через его голову обращался к полковнику Кэткарту с предложением рассылать официальные письма-соболезнования семьям убитых или раненых в бою.

The chaplain's wife was the one thing in the world he could be certain of, and it would have been sufficient, if only he had been left to live his life out with just her and the children.

Жена капеллана была единственным существом на свете, которому он мог верить, и он просил у судьбы только одного: прожить с женой и детьми до гробовой доски.

The chaplain's wife was a reserved, diminutive, agreeable woman in her early thirties, very dark and very attractive, with a narrow waist, calm intelligent eyes, and small, bright, pointy teeth in a childlike face that was vivacious and petite; he kept forgetting what his children looked like, and each time he returned to their snapshots it was like seeing their faces for the first time.

Жена капеллана была миниатюрная, сдержанная, покладистая, темноволосая, необыкновенно привлекательная, живая и изящная женщина лет тридцати с лишним. У нее была тонкая талия, спокойные, умные глаза и мелкие, острые зубки, сверкавшие на ее детском личике. Капеллан стал забывать, как выглядят его дети, и всякий раз, рассматривая снимки, испытывал ощущение, будто видит их лица впервые.

The chaplain loved his wife and children with such tameless intensity that he often wanted to sink to the ground helplessly and weep like a castaway cripple.

Капеллан любил свою жену и детей с такой необузданной силой, что ему часто хотелось пасть на землю и рыдать, как беспомощному, бесприютному калеке.

He was tormented inexorably by morbid fantasies involving them, by dire, hideous omens of illness and accident. His meditations were polluted with threats of dread diseases like Ewing's tumor and leukemia; he saw his infant son die two or three times every week because he had never taught his wife how to stop arterial bleeding; watched, in tearful, paralyzed silence, his whole family electrocuted, one after the other, at a baseboard socket because he had never told her that a human body would conduct electricity; all four went up in flames almost every night when the water heater exploded and set the two-story wooden house afire; in ghastly, heartless, revolting detail he saw his poor dear wife's trim and fragile body crushed to a viscous pulp against the brick wall of a market building by a half-wined drunken automobile driver and watched his hysterical five-year-old daughter being led away from the grisly scene by a kindly middle-aged gentleman with snow-white hair who raped and murdered her repeatedly as soon as he had driven her off to a deserted sandpit, while his two younger children starved to death slowly in the house after his wife's mother, who had been baby-sitting, dropped dead from a heart attack when news of his wife's accident was given to her over the telephone.

Его неотвязно мучили кошмарные картины: фантазия рисовала ему жену и детей, погибающих от страшной болезни или от несчастного случая.

The chaplain's wife was a sweet, soothing, considerate woman, and he yearned to touch the warm flesh of her slender arm again and stroke her smooth black hair, to hear her intimate, comforting voice. She was a much stronger person than he was. He wrote brief, untroubled letters to her once a week, sometimes twice. He wanted to write urgent love letters to her all day long and crowd the endless pages with desperate, uninhibited confessions of his humble worship and need and xwith careful instructions for administering artificial respiration.

От жены, милой и рассудительной, веяло покоем, и капеллан мечтал коснуться ее теплой, тонкой руки, погладить ее гладкие черные волосы, услышать ее родной, ласковый голос.

He wanted to pour out to her in torrents of self-pity all his unbearable loneliness and despair and warn her never to leave the boric acid or the aspirin in reach of the children or to cross a street against the traffic light. He did not wish to worry her. The chaplain's wife was intuitive, gentle, compassionate and responsive. Almost inevitably, his reveries of reunion with her ended in explicit acts of love-making.

Ему хотелось излить свои горести, поведать о своем невыносимом одиночестве, отчаянье и заодно предупредить, чтобы она не оставляла на виду у детей борную кислоту и аспирин, а также, чтобы она переходила улицу только при зеленом свете.

The chaplain felt most deceitful presiding at funerals, and it would not have astonished him to learn that the apparition in the tree that day was a manifestation of the Almighty's censure for the blasphemy and pride inherent in his function.

Капеллан остро ощущал всю вопиющую фальшь своего главенствующего положения на похоронах, и он бы не удивился, узнав, что появление призрака на дереве свидетельствует об осуждении господом богохульства и гордыни, свойственной профессии священника.

To simulate gravity, feign grief and pretend supernatural intelligence of the hereafter in so fearsome and arcane a circumstance as death seemed the most criminal of offenses.

Напускать на себя серьезность, симулировать горе, прикидываться, будто понимаешь мистический смысл потусторонней жизни (и все это перед лицом столь устрашающего и непостижимого явления, как смерть), казалось капеллану самым тяжким преступлением.

He recalled-or was almost convinced he recalled-the scene at the cemetery perfectly.

Он помнил - или был почти убежден, что помнит, - сцену похорон до мельчайших подробностей.

He could still see Major Major and Major Danby standing somber as broken stone pillars on either side of him, see almost the exact number of enlisted men and almost the exact places in which they had stood, see the four unmoving men with spades, the repulsive coffin and the large, loose, triumphant mound of reddish-brown earth, and the massive, still, depthless, muffling sky, so weirdly blank and blue that day it was almost poisonous.