Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (in English, adapted for intermediate)

Fever Dream (Intermediate) читать Продолжаем публиковать рассказы Рэй Брэдбери на английском языке. Читайте захватывающую историю «Лихорадочный бред» (уровень средний — Fever Dream (for intermediate). Это рассказ о больном мальчике. Он лежал в постели и в его голову приходили разные мысли. Что это бред больного воображения или реальность, которая просто не воспринимается в нормальном состоянии…

Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (intermediate)

Рассказ разбит на 4 части. К каждой части прилагается список слов для изучения.

  1. Part One
  2. Part Two
  3. Part Three
  4. Part Four

Essential Vocabulary for the Story (intermediate)

Английские слова, которые надо знать обязательно, прежде чем вы начнете читать этот рассказ, большинство которых относится к теме «Illness». ПРОВЕРЬТЕ СЕБЯ, ЗНАЕТЕ ЛИ ВЫ ЭТИ СЛОВА!

Nouns (25): decease, fever, cold, virus, germ, lungs, physician, pillow, blanket, sheet, fingers, toes, nails, ankle, knee, neck, throat, cheek, mole, brow, brain, tongue, chest, back, scar

Adjectives (10): pale, colourless, hot, sweaty, moist/damp, wet, exhausted, weak, blind, alive

Verbs (10): overcome (overcame, overcome), whisper, swallow, lie still (lay, lain), beat (beat,beaten), scream, fall asleep (fell. fallen), weep (wept, wept), breathe, cut off (cut, cut)

Список английских слов для изучения

Essential nouns (существительные):

  1. decease — заболевание
  2. fever — лихорадка
  3. cold — простуда
  4. virus — вирус
  5. germ — микроб
  6. physician — врач
  7. fingers— пальцы на руках
  8. toes— пальцы на ногах
  9. nails — ногти
  10. ankle— лодыжка
  11. knee— колено
  12. brain — мозг
  13. neck -шея
  14. throat — горло
  15. cheek — щека
  16. mole — родинка
  17. brow — лоб
  18. tongue — язык
  19. chest — грудь
  20. lungs — легкие
  21. back — спина
  22. scar — шрам
  23. sheet— простыня
  24. pillow — подушка
  25. blanket — одеяло

Essential adjectives (прилагательные):

  1. pale — бледный
  2. weak — слабый
  3. colourless — бесцветный
  4. hot — горячий
  5. sweaty — потный
  6. moist/damp — влажный
  7. wet — мокрый
  8. exhausted — измученный
  9. blind — слепой
  10. alive — живой

Essential verbs (глаголы):

  1. overcome (overcame, overcome)- овладеть
  2. whisper — шептать
  3. swallow — глотать
  4. lie still (lay, lain) — лежать неподвижно
  5. beat (beat,beaten)- биться, пульсировать
  6. scream— пронзительно кричать
  7. fall asleep (fell. fallen)- заснуть
  8. weep (wept, wept) — плакать
  9. breathe — дышать
  10. cut off — отрезать

Fever Dream (intermediate). Part 1

Words to understand:

  • would stick their heads into — заглядывали в комнату (глагол would  указывает на периодичность действия)
  • feel lousy — чувствовать себя отвратительно
  • fix itself — засесть (перен. в голове)
  • shifted cell by cell— менялась клетка за клеткой
  • fascinated horror — охваченный ужасом
  • stumps — обрубки
  • feverish change — лихорадочное изменение
  • the warmth —  тепло
  • the glow — жар

They put him between fresh, clean sheets and there was always a glass of orange juice on the table under the dim pink lamp. All Charles had to do was call and Mom or Dad would stick their heads into his room to see how sick he was.
He was fifteen, Charles was. It was mid September, the beginning of autumn. He lay in the bed for three days before the terror overcame him.

His hand began to change. His right hand. He looked at it and it was hot and sweaty. It moved a bit. Then it lay on the bed, alone, changing its colour.

That afternoon the doctor came again. ‘How are you?’ asked he, smiling. ‘I know, don’t tell me: «My cold is fine, Doctor, but I feel lousy!» Ha!’ He laughed at his own joke.

But for Charles that terrible joke was becoming a reality. It fixed itself in his mind. The doctor did not know how cruel he was with his jokes. ‘Doctor,’ whispered Charles, lying flat and colourless. ‘My hand, it doesn’t belong to me any more. This morning it changed into something else. I want you to change it back. Doctor, Doctor!’

The doctor showed his teeth and touched his hand. ‘It looks fine to me, son. You just had a little fever.’

‘But it changed, Doctor, oh, Doctor,’ cried Charles, holding up his pale wild hand. ‘It did!’

The doctor looked at him. ‘I’ll give you a pink pill for that.’ He put a tablet on to Charles’s tongue. ‘Swallow.’

‘Will it make my hand change back and become me, again?’

‘Yes, yes.’

The house was silent when the doctor drove off down the road in his car under the quiet, blue September sky. A clock ticked far below in the kitchen world. Charles lay looking at his hand.

It did not change back. It was still something else.

The wind blew outside. Leaves fell against the cool window.

At four o’clock his other hand changed. It seemed almost to become a virus. It pulsed and shifted cell by cell. It beat like a warm heart. The finger-nails turned blue and then red. It took about an hour for it to change and when it was finished, it looked just like any ordinary hand. But it was not ordinary. It no longer was him any more. He lay in a fascinated horror and then fell into an exhausted sleep.

Mother brought the soup up at six. He wouldn’t touch it. ‘I haven’t any hands,’ he said, eyes shut.

‘Your hands are perfectly good,’ said Mother.

‘No,’ he wept. ‘My hands are gone. I feel like I have stumps. Oh, Mama, Mama, hold me, hold me, I’m scared!’

She had to feed him herself.

‘Mama,’ he said, ‘get the doctor, please, again, I’m so sick.’

‘The doctor’ll be here tonight at eight,’ she said, and went out.

At seven, with night dark and close around the house, Charles was sitting up in bed when he felt the thing happening to first one leg then the other. ‘Mama! Come quick!’ he screamed.

But when Mama came the thing was no longer happening. When she went downstairs, he simply lay without fighting as his legs beat and beat, hot and red, and the room filled with the warmth of his feverish change. The glow went up from his toes to his ankles and then to his knees.

* * *

Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (intermediate). Part 2

Words to understand:

  • tolerantlyздесь не спеша
  • whole and healthy — цел и невредим
  • scarlet fever — скарлатина
  • petrified- окаменелый
  • rot — гнилые
  • build up — зд. пропитывать
  • bunch of cells — скопление клеток
  • out здесь выжить
  • reproduce — воспроизводить себе подобных
  • take over — захватить

Nouns:

  1. decease
  2. fever
  3. cold
  4. virus
  5. germ
  6. lungs
  7. physician
  8. pillow
  9. blanket
  10. sheet
  11. fingers
  12. toes
  13. nails
  14. ankle
  15. knee
  16. neck
  17. throat
  18. cheek
  19. mole
  20. brow
  21. brain
  22. tongue
  23. chest
  24. back
  25. scar

Adjectives:

  1. pale
  2. colourless
  3. hot
  4. sweaty
  5. moist/damp
  6. wet
  7. exhausted
  8. weak
  9. blind
  10. alive

Verbs:

  1. overcome (overcame, overcome)
  2. whisper
  3. swallow
  4. lie still (lay, lain)
  5. beat (beat,beaten)
  6. scream
  7. fall asleep (fell. fallen)
  8. weep (wept, wept)
  9. breathe
  10. cut off

‘May I come in?’ The doctor smiled in the doorway.

‘Doctor!’ cried Charles. ‘Hurry, take off my blankets!’

The doctor lifted the blankets tolerantly. ‘There you are. Whole and healthy. Sweating, though. A little fever. I told you not to move around, bad boy.’ He touched the moist pink cheek. ‘Did the pills help? Did your hand change back?’

‘No, no, now it’s my other hand and my legs!’

‘Well, well, I’ll have to give you three more pills, one for each hand and leg, eh, my little boy?’ laughed the doctor.

‘Will they help me? Please, please. What’ve I got?’

‘It’s a fever.’

‘Is it a germ that lives and has more little germs in me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure it’s a fever? You haven’t taken any tests!’

‘I guess I know a certain fever when I see one,’ said the doctor, checking the boy’s pulse.

Charles lay there, not speaking. Then he spoke slowly, ‘I read a book once. About petrified trees, wood turning to stone. About how trees fell and rotted and minerals got in and built up and they look just like trees, but they’re not, they’re stone.’ He stopped.

‘Well?’ asked the doctor.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Charles, after a time. ‘Do germs ever get big? I mean in biology class they told us about bacteriа, cells and things, and how, millions of years ago, they got together and made the first body. And more and more cells got together and got bigger and finally maybe there was a fish and finally we are. All we are is a bunch of cells that decided get together, to help each other out. Isn’t that right?

‘What’s all this about?’ The doctor looked at him closely.

‘I’ve got to tell you this. Doctor, oh, I’ve got to!’ he cried. ‘What would happen, oh just imagine, please imagine that like in the old days, a lot of microbes got together and wanted to make a bunch, and reproduced and made more —

His white hands were on his chest now, moving towards throat.

‘And they decided to take over a person!’ cried Charles.

Take over a person?’

‘Yes, become a person. Me, my hands, my feet! What if a disease somehow knew how to kill a person and yet live after him?’

He screamed.

The hands were on his neck.

The doctor moved forward, shouting.

* * *

Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (intermediate). Part 3

Words to understand:

  • strap— привязывать бинтами
  • bruises — синяки
  • choke— душить
  • be still awake — бодрствовать (не спать)
  • insane — безумный
  • thrash — метаться
  • faintly — слабо
  • clench— сжаться
  • numbed — онемевшая

Nouns:

  1. decease
  2. fever
  3. cold
  4. virus
  5. germ
  6. lungs
  7. physician
  8. pillow
  9. blanket
  10. sheet
  11. fingers
  12. toes
  13. nails
  14. ankle
  15. knee
  16. neck
  17. throat
  18. cheek
  19. mole
  20. brow
  21. brain
  22. tongue
  23. chest
  24. back
  25. scar

Adjectives:

  1. pale
  2. colourless
  3. hot
  4. sweaty
  5. moist/damp
  6. wet
  7. exhausted
  8. weak
  9. blind
  10. alive

Verbs:

  1. overcome (overcame, overcome)
  2. whisper
  3. swallow
  4. lie still (lay, lain)
  5. beat (beat,beaten)
  6. scream
  7. fall asleep (fell. fallen)
  8. weep (wept, wept)
  9. breathe
  10. cut off

At nine o’clock the doctor was going to his car followed by the mother and father, who handed him up his bag. They talked in the cool night wind for a few minutes. ‘Just be sure his hands are kept strapped to his legs,’ said the doctor. ‘I don’t want him hurting himself!’

‘Will he be all right, Doctor?’ The mother held to his arm a moment.

He touched her shoulder. ‘Haven’t I been your family physician for thirty years? It’s the fever, he imagines things.’

‘But those bruises on his throat, he almost choked himself.’

‘Just you keep him strapped; he’ll be all right in the morning.’

The car moved off down the dark September road.
At three in the morning, Charles was still awake in his small back room. The bed was damp under his head and his back. He was very warm. Now he no longer had any arms or legs, and his body was beginning to change. He did not move on the bed, but looked at the vast blank ceiling with insane concentration. For a while he had screamed and thrashed but now he was weak. His mother was near to put a wet towel on his brow. Now he was silent, his hands strapped to his legs.

He felt his body change, the organs shift, the lungs catch fire. The room was going around him.

Now he had no body. It was all gone. It was under him, but it was filled with a vast pulse of some burning. It was as if a guillotine had neatly cut off his head and his head lay shining on a midnight pillow while the body, below, still alive, belonged to somebody else. The disease had eaten his body and from the eating had reproduced itself in feverish duplicate. There were the little hand-hairs and the finger-nails and the scars and the toenails and the tiny mole on his right arm, all done again in perfect fashion.

I am dead, he thought. I’ve been killed, and yet I live. My body is dead, it is all disease and nobody will know. I will walk around and it will not be me, it will be something else. It will be something all bad, all evil, so big and so evil it’s hard to understand or think about. Something that will buy shoes and drink water and get married some day maybe and do more evil in the world than has ever been done.

Now the warmth was going up to his neck, into his cheeks, like a hot wine. His lips burned, his eyelids, like leaves, caught fire. His nostrils breathed out blue flame, faintly, faintly.

This will be all, he thought. It’ll take my head, my brain, my eyes and every hair and every tooth and every wrinkle in my ears, and there’ll be nothing left of me.

He felt his brain boil. He felt his left eye clench in upon itself and, like a snail, withdraw, shift. He was blind in his left eye. It no longer belonged to him. It was enemy territory. His tongue was gone, cut out. His left cheek was numbed, lost. His left ear stopped hearing. It belonged to someone else now. The thing was born.

Вот на этом место давайте остановимся. А ведь сюжет-то что-то напоминает…. Hу, конечно, фильм «The Thing». Смотрели его? Обязательно посмотрите! Но вначале давайте дочитаем рассказ до конца!

* * *

Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (intermediate). Part 4

Words to understand:

  • flood down — вытекать
  • gasping — задыхаясь
  • rub my hands on all the cloaks — трогать чужие вещи
  • Fit as a fiddle! — «Здоров как бык!»
  • straps — бинты
  • quiver — дергаться
  • still — неподвижно
  • pet— погладить

He tried to scream and he was able to scream loud, just as his brain flooded down, his right eye and right ear were cut out, he was blind and deaf, all fire, all panic, all death.

His scream stopped before his mother ran through the door to his bed.

It was a good, clear September morning with a brisk wind. The doctor had just arrived, his car was before the house. In the window above, the boy stood, fully dressed. He did not wave when the doctor waved and called, ‘What’s this? Up? My God!’ The doctor almost ran upstairs. He came gasping into the bedroom.

‘What are you doing out of bed?’ he shouted. He tapped the boy’s thin chest, took his pulse and temperature. ‘Absolutely amazing! Normal. Normal, by God!’

‘I shall never be sick again in my life,’ said the boy, quietly, standing there, looking out of the window. ‘Never.’

‘I hope not. Why, you’re looking fine, Charles.’

‘Doctor?’

‘Yes, Charles?’

‘Can I go to school now?’ asked Charles.

‘Tomorrow will be time enough. Do you want to go to school?’

‘I do. I like school. All the kids. I want to play with them and wrestle with them, and play with the girl’s pigtails and shake the teacher’s hand, and rub my hands on all the cloaks in the cloakroom, and I want to grow up and travel and shake hands with people all over the world, and be married and have lots of children, and go to libraries and handle books and — all of that I want to!’ said the boy, looking off into the September morning. ‘What’s the name you called me?’

‘What?’ The doctor puzzled. ‘I called you nothing but Charles.’

‘It’s better than no name at all, I guess,’ Charles shrugged.

‘I’m glad you want to go back to school,’ said the doctor.

‘I am really waiting for it,’ smiled the boy. ‘Thank you for your help, Doctor. Shake hands.’

‘Glad to.’

They shook hands and the clear wind blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy smiling up at the old man and thanking him.

Then, laughing, the boy went after the doctor downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed them.

‘Fit as a fiddle!‘ said the doctor. ‘Fantastic!’

‘And strong,’ said the father. ‘He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn’t you, Charles?’

‘Did I?’ said the boy.

‘You did! How?’

‘Oh,’ the boy said, ‘that was a long time ago.’

‘A long time ago!’

They all laughed, and while they were laughing, the quiet boy moved his foot on the sidewalk and put it on a number of red ants that were hurrying about on the sidewalk. Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents talked with the old man, he saw the ants quiver, and lie still on the cement. He knew they were cold now.

‘Good bye!’

The doctor drove away, waving.

Рассказы Рэя Брэдбери на английском языке. Fever DreamThe boy walked ahead of his parents. As he walked, he looked away towards the town and began to sing something very quietly.

‘It’s good to have him well again,’ said the father.

‘Yes, he looks his normal self.’

The boy turned. He came up to his parents and kissed them both several times.

Then, without a word, he jumped up the steps into the house.

In the sitting-room, before the others entered, he quickly opened the birdcage, put his hand in, and petted the yellow canary, once.

Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and waited.

* * *

Если Вы хотите прочитать  Рэй Брэдбери «Всего лишь лихорадочный бред» еще раз, но уже на русском языке, то это можно сделать здесь  https://raybradbury.ru/library/story/48/11/3/

Читайте еще рассказы Рэя Брэдбери на английском языке для среднего уровня на сайте englishstory.ru::


Также Вы найдете много интересных книг известного писателя-фантаста на сайте интернет-магазина My Shop. Избранные романы писателя можно приобрести прямо сейчас —  Купить книгу Рэя Брэдбери.

One thought on “Ray Bradbury. Fever Dream (in English, adapted for intermediate)
  1. twysvetlana says:

    It’s good.The boy became well.He is glad of a new life.

Добавить комментарий

Ваш e-mail не будет опубликован. Обязательные поля помечены *