Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas / Страх и отвращение в Лас-Вегасе. Хантер С. Томпсон
Читать онлайн.| Название | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas / Страх и отвращение в Лас-Вегасе |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Хантер С. Томпсон |
| Жанр | |
| Серия | Abridged & Adapted |
| Издательство | |
| Год выпуска | 1971 |
| isbn | 978-5-907097-24-7 |
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with sunglasses.
“Never mind[5],” I said. “It's your turn to drive.”
I hit the brakes and pulled the Great Red Shark[6] over to the side of the highway. No point mentioning[7] those bats, I thought. Soon the poor bastard will see them himself.
It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. Difficult miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted[8]. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would ride it out[9]. Press-registration for the fabulous Mint 400[10] had already started, and we had to be there by four to get our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had paid for the reservations and this huge red Chevy[11] convertible we rented… and I was, after all, a professional journalist, so I had to cover the story, for good or ill[12].
The sporting-editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of our car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a galaxy of uppers and downers, and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser[13], a pint of ether, and two dozen amyls.[14] All this had been collected the night before. Driving all over Los Angeles[15], we picked up everything we could get our hands on. It's not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, you go as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man on ether. And I knew we’d get into that stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had tried almost everything else, and now – yes, it was time for ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible stupor. The only way to stay focused on ether is to do a lot of amyls – not all at once, but regularly, just enough to drive at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.
“Man, this is the way to travel,” said my attorney. He turned the volume up on the radio, humming along.
I could hardly hear the radio because I turned our tape recorder all the way up on “Sympathy for the Devil”[16]. That was the only tape we had, so we played it over and over again[17], along with the radio and also to keep our rhythm on the road. A constant speed, for some reason, seemed important at the time. Indeed, on a trip like this, one must be careful to avoid acceleration that draws blood to the back of the brain.
My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did.
“Let’s give this boy a lift,” he said, and before I could argue, he stopped, and this poor kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, “Damn![18] I never rode in a convertible before!”
“Is that so?” I said. “Well, I guess you’re ready then, eh?”
The kid nodded as we roared off.
“We’re your friends,” said my attorney. “We’re not like the others.”
Oh Christ, I thought, he’s already high[19].
“No more of that talk,” I said sharply. “Or I’ll put the leeches on you.”
He grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awful – with the wind and the radio and the tape recorder – that the kid in the back seat couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Or could he?
How long can we maintain?[20] I wondered. How long before one of us starts jumping at this boy? What will he think then when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge rays coming down on the car? Well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because we can’t let him go. He’ll report us at once to some Nazi, and they’ll track us down[21].
Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced at my attorney, but he was watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat. Maybe I’d better have a chat with this boy, I thought. Maybe if I explain things, he’ll relax. Of course. I turned around in the seat and gave him a fine big smile.
“By the way,” I said. “There’s one thing you should probably understand.”
He stared at me, not blinking.
“Can you hear me?” I yelled.
He nodded.
“That’s good,” I said. “Because I want you to know that we’re on our way to Las Vegas to find the American Dream[22].” I smiled. “That’s why we rented this car. It was the only way to do it. Understand that?”
He nodded again, but his eyes were nervous.
“I want you to understand it,” I said. “Because this is a very serious assignment… extreme personal danger… Hell, I forgot about this beer; you want one?”
He shook his head.
“How about some ether?” I said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s see. About twenty-four hours ago we were sitting in the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel[23] under a palm tree when this uniformed dwarf came up to me with a pink telephone and said, ‘This must be the call you’ve been waiting for all this time, sir.’” I laughed and opened a beer can that spilled all over the back seat. “And you know what? He was right! I’d been waiting for that call, but I didn’t know who it would come from. Do you understand me?” The boy’s face was a mask of pure bewilderment.
I went on: “I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney! Jesus Christ, look at him! He doesn’t look like you or me, right? That’s because he’s a foreigner. I think he’s probably Samoan[24]. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Oh, hell no!” the boy cried.
“Exactly,” I said. “Because this man is extremely valuable to me.” I looked at my attorney, but his mind was somewhere else. I hit the back of the driver’s seat with my fist. “This is important, goddamn it[25]! This is a true story!”
The car swerved.
“Keep your hands off my goddamn neck!” my attorney screamed.
The kid in the back looked like he was ready to jump right out of the car. Our vibrations were getting nasty – but why? Was there no communication in this car?
I was puzzled, frustrated because my story was true. I was certain of that. And it was extremely important, I felt, for the meaning of our journey to be absolutely clear.
We had actually been sitting there in the Beverly Hills Hotel – for many hours – drinking gin cocktails with beer and mescaline. And when the call came, I was ready.
The dwarf came up to our table, as I remember, and when
Ничего, забудь.
Так автор книги Хантер Томпсон называл свой кабриолет «Шевроле Импала» 1971 г.
Нет смысла упоминать
нас будет штырить / плющить по полной
Ничего, по дороге всё выветрится.
Самые популярные гонки внедорожников по пустыне штата Невада в окрестностях Лас-Вегаса, впервые организованные в 1968 г.
«Шевроле»
так или иначе / в любом случае мне надо было провести репортаж с места событий
«Бадвайзер» (или «Будвайзер») – светлое пиво, популярное в США
Лос-Анджелес – город на юге штата Калифорния, США
Ритмичная песня группы The Rolling Stones
снова и снова
Чёрт возьми!
да его уже торкнуло
Сколько мы ещё продержимся?
и они нас выследят
Американская мечта – жизненные идеалы граждан США, «мечта о стране, в которой жизнь каждого человека будет лучше, богаче и полнее, и он сможет получить всё то, чего заслуживает»; впервые термин появился в трактате Дж. Адамса (1931 г.)
Знаменитый роскошный пятизвёздочный отель в Лос-Анджелесе
Самоанцы – коренное население островов Самоа в Полинезии
Чёрт побери!