The Invisible Man

by Герберт Уэллс

  For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression than running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun, looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred by his own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookout for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea had dropped out of sight behind it, and people below were stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that was the police station. Were those footsteps he heard behind him? Spurt.

  The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite near now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors. Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel—the drainage works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street,[5] with human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper—astounded by the sight of his furious haste—stood staring with the tram horses[6] unhitched. Farther on the astonished features of navvies appeared above the mounds of gravel.

  His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his pursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible Man!" he cried to the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration leapt the excavation, and placed a burly group between him and the chase. Then, abandoning the idea of the police station, he turned into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart, hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweet-stuff shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into the main Hill Street again. Two or three little children were playing here, and shrieked and scattered running at his apparition, and forthwith, doors and windows opened, and excited mothers revealed their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street once more, three hundred yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a tumultuous vociferation and running people.

  He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists clenched. Up the street others followed these two, striking and shouting. Down towards the town men and women were running, and he noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop door with a stick in his hand. "Spread out! Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenly grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped and looked round, panting. "He's close here!" he cried. "Form a line across—"

  He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face round towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. In another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came, whirling through the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly relaxed, and with a convulsive effort Kemp loosed himself, grasped a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows near the ground. "I've got him!" screamed Kemp. "Help! help—hold! He's down! Hold his feet!"

  In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle, and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an exceptionally savage game of Rugby football[7] was in progress. And there was no shouting after Kemp's cry—only a sound of blows and feet and a heavy breathing.

  Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man staggered to his feet. Kemp clung to him in front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands clutched and tore at the unseen. The tram conductor got the neck, and lugged him back.

  Down went the heap of struggling men again. There was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream of "Mercy, mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.

  "Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms.

  "He's hurt, I tell you. Stand back."

  There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of eager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a constable gripped invisible ankles.

  "Don't you leave go of en! " cried the big navvy, holding a blood-stained spade; "he's shamming."

  "He's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee, "and I'll hold him." His face was bruised, and already turning red; he spoke thickly, because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand, and seemed to be feeling at the face. "The mouth's all wet," he said. And then, "Good Lord!"

  He stood up abruptly, and then knelt down on the ground by the side of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of heavy feet as fresh people came to increase the pressure of the crowd. Men were coming out of the houses. The doors of the "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said. Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He's not breathing," he said, and then, "I can't feel his heart. His side—ugh!"

  An old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy, screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said, and thrust out a wrinkled finger. And looking where she pointed, every one saw, faint and transparent, as though made of glass, so that veins and arteries, and bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand—a hand limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.[8]

  "Hallo!" cried the constable. "Here's his feet a-showing!"

  And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet, and creeping slowly along his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change to visible fleshliness continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came the little white veins tracing a hazy gray sketch of a limb, then the glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first a faint fogginess and then growing rapidly dense and opaque. Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and the dim outline of his drawn and battered features.

  When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay, naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty. His hair and brow were white—not gray with age, but white with the whiteness of albinism—and his eyes were like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and his expression was one of anger and dismay.

  "Cover his face!" cried a man. "For Gawd's, sake cover that face!"

  Some one brought a sheet from the "Jolly Cricketers," and having covered him, they carried him into that house. And there it was, on a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd of ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career.

  The Epilogue

  So ends the story of the strange and evil experiment of the Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent little man with a nose of cylindrical protrusion, wiry hair, and a sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you generously of all the things that happened to him after that time, and of how the lawyers tried to "do him out of"[1] the treasure found upon him.

  "When they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, I'm blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a blooming treasure trove! Do I look like a Treasure Trove?[2] And then a gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the
story at the Empire Music 'All—just tell 'em in my own words—barring one."

  And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly, you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript books in the story. He admits there were, and proceeds to explain with asseverations that everybody thinks he has 'em. But, bless you! he hasn't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on with the idea[3] of my having 'em."

  He subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively, bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

  He is a bachelor man—his tastes were ever bachelor, and there are no women-folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons—it is expected of him—but in his more vital privacies, in the matter of braces, for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.[4]

  On Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning, all the year round, while he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten, he goes into his bar parlour, bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged with water, and having placed this down, he locks the door and examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And then, being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard, and a box in the cupboard, and a drawer in that box, and produces three volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with an algal green—for once they sojourned in a ditch, and some of the pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly—gloating over the books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and begins to study it, turning over the leaves backwards and forwards.

  His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. "Hex, little two up in the air, cross and a fiddle-de-dee. Lord! what a one he was for intellect!"

  Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke across the room at things invisible to other eyes. "Full of secrets," he says. "Wonderful secrets!

  "Once I get the haul of them—Lord!

  "I wouldn't do what he did; I'd just—well!" He pulls at his pipe.

  So he lapses into a dream, the undying, wonderful dream of his life. And though Kemp has fished unceasingly, no human being save the landlord knows those books are there, with the subtle secret of invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein. And none other will know of them until he dies.

  Комментарий

  Задача данного комментария — объяснить наиболее трудные для понимания языковые явления, а также реалии исторического и бытового характера, встречающиеся в тексте.

  Язык книги, насыщенный идиоматическими оборотами, является образцом современного разговорного английского языка. Но там, где автор воспроизводит речь жителей Суссекса (графство в юго-восточной Англии), встречается много оборотов, свойственных английским диалектам и просторечию. Основными из этих отклонений от норм литературного английского языка являются следующие:

  Двойное отрицание: he don't want no help.

  Употребление формы Past вместо Past Participle в перфектных временах и в пассиве: he's took your room; my sister being took up with her little ones. Это явление юмористически подчёркивается автором в сцене с матросом, читающим газету. Он «поправляет» её по-своему: "…it is supposed that he has taken—took, I suppose they mean—the road to Port Stowe."

  Употребление форм Present вместо Past: he give a name.

  Употребление форм 1-го лица глаголов вместо 3-го и наоборот: he don't; you likes.

  Употребление форм единственного числа глаголов to be и to have вместо форм множественного числа: we was.

  Употребление ain't (несуществующего вообще в литературном языке) вместо любой формы настоящего времени глаголов to be и to have: he ain't even given a name.

  Неправильное образование глагольных форм: seed (прошедшее время от see, вместо saw).

  Употребление старой формы Participle I: a-coming и инфинитива без to: I want know (характерно для диалектов).

  Употребление архаических форм личных местоимений: 'ee (thee) (характерно для диалектов) и особой диалектной формы личных местоимений him и her — en (слабая форма 'n) с производным от него enself.

  Употребление форм личного местоимения they, them вместо указательных местоимений these, those: they goggles; what a turn them bandages did give me.

  Употребление указательного местоимения that вместо наречия so перед прилагательными: that bad, that trustful.

  Употребление объектного падежа личных местоимений вместо именительного: and him a new guest.

  Употребление прилагательного вместо соответствующего наречия: extraordinary strong; he can go through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you could give the slip to a blind man.

  Употребление формы неопределённого артикля а перед гласными: a extraordinary.

  В книге нашли также отражение характерные особенности произношения жителей Суссекса:

  1) Очень широкое употребление звука [α:] вместо [æ]: larder (ladder); marn (man); вместо [ɔ: и [ɔ]: Gard (God), gart (got), darg (dog), harse (horse); вместо [αι], [αu]: Arm darmed (I'm darned), nar (now);

  2) Опущение звука [h] в начальном положении: 'е (he), 'ed (head) свойственное английскому просторечию вообще.

  Родбертус-Ягецов, Карл (1805–1875) — немецкий историк и экономист, один из основоположников так называемого государственного социализма, апологет прусской монархии, ярый враг марксизма.

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  1.1

  to strike a bargain — заключить сделку; зд. договориться о цене

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  1.2

  with that much introduction — ограничившись только этим для знакомства. That much соотв. русскому «всего навсего»

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  1.3

  no "haggler" — не из тех, кто торгуется. Отрицание с глаголом to be более выразительно и энергично, чем not. См. то же no hero — «отнюдь не герой», и no believer in voices — «не из тех, кто верит в голоса».

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  1.4

  aid — зд. служанка. Ср. ниже help с
тем же значением.

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  1.5

  éclat [eι´klα:] (фр.) — зд. шик

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  1.6

  side-lights — зд. боковые стёкла

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  1.7

  her conversational advances were ill-timed — её попытки завязать разговор были несвоевременны

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  1.8

  staccato (муз.) — коротко, отрывисто

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  1.9

  verbal stabs — колкие замечания (букв. словесные уколы)

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  1.10

  I'll have them nicely dried — я велю их хорошо просушить. Употребление to have + сложное дополнение them dried указывает на то, что действие выполняется не субъектом, выраженным подлежащим, а кем-то другим. То же с глаголом get: I'll… get the bloodhounds put on — «я велю натравить (на него) собак».