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Открыта: 09-07-2001
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Костенко Андрей Владимирович

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Продвинутый English

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Выпуск #130

"ПРОДВИНУТЫЙ ENGLISH"

25.09.06

Электронный журнал для изучающих английский язык

Dear subscribers! We are pleased to publish the second part of "The Gratuity" by Otto Pfarrer. As you are the very first readers of the story in English, your feed-back is very important for us.

We'd like to thank those 56 subscribers who voted for the latest issue of our newsletter. Our huge thank-you goes to them all, especially to those 48 from 32,317 who decided it should be exactly '5'. If we understand things correctly, the rest are all snowed under with too many other things. Life isn't fair, is it? Do you like what we are doing for you guys? Or not really?

GRAMMAR - Verbs in Time Clauses
Future Time

*Time is a general, universal (philosophical) category, while tense is purely grammatical. Morphologically we have only two tenses in English, present and past (he likes, he liked; he takes, he took). Other verbal categories (perfect, progressive), which we traditionally also call tenses, are achieved by the use of the auxiliaries ‘be’ and ‘have’. Future is expressed by a variety of tenses and other grammatical means (Present Simple, Present Progressive (Continuous), shall, will, to be going to, etc.).

The present tense is used in time clauses expressing future time.

He will go straight home after he closes the store.
She will never marry until she finds the right man.

The present perfect tense may occur in future time clauses, especially with after or until.

He will go straight home after he has closed the store.
She will never marry until she has found the right man.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Gratuity

-- By Otto Pfarrer --

Continuation (the first part of the story is in issue # 129):

I remember the Kerekes family very well even now. Besides Uncle Feri, the famous physician, there was Aunt Eva, the doctor’s wife, the eldest daughter Eva, then Zhuzha and Ferike, the only son. Later on we all became friends. I found Eva, the eldest daughter, who was one or two years older than me, even very beautiful and worth of being loved. Actually she was neither. But a little boy’s love is blind. Zhuzha was my peer or a little bit younger, but I was not fond of her. The reason perhaps lay in the fact that she had a much older friend called also Zhuzha, Zhuzha Molnar, who once on the staircase leading up to the house had put a big carrot between her thighs, and said loudly laughing that look what a nasty thing stood (so what she said she saw must have been always standing) between the legs of boys. I was awfully ashamed and found it very, very disgusting, for I was just a little boy and thought this ugly big girl had just lied because so far I had never seen that thingum ever stand between my or other boys’ legs.

thingum сущ. разг. употр. вм. забытого слова или имени как бишь его?

But to make a long story short grandma and relatives went to live in one of the rooms of the Kerekes House. And when a year later dad was arrested and sent to Vorkuta, Komi ASSR, where there was a cozy little concentration camp beyond the Northern polar circle, we always went from home, that is the room we lived in the house in ul. Ostrovskaya, to grandma in the Kerekes House where it was mostly grandma who did “the babysitting” for the years to come. Ma had to work all day and even night to earn the daily bread. To late night even, because I can recollect that me and my younger brother very often could not fall asleep, and just sat on the bed weeping, for ma was not at home, and where could she be we wondered. Once my brother even jumped over the fence (we had no key to open the gate), and ran away to meet ma.
Well, I think it will be quite sufficient for an introduction to understand the essence of the story. But still I have to say something more about grandma since this story is intended as a memento of and about her primarily.

memento -общ. напоминание; сувенир; памятный подарок; церк. поминание (у католиков)
primarily - прежде всего; первым делом; главным образом; в первую очередь.

Her most characteristic feature of hers as far as I can recollect was her love of people. As long as she was rich, and all people and relatives who knew her said she was very rich, even one of the richest Ladies of the region, whose hands were always humbly kissed when greeted, she was always ready to give: clothes and food to poor, land and a family house to relatives if married and had nothing to start life with, or at least lunch or dinner to those who were hungry. In other words everybody was given something if asked her to give. And when she became poor as a church mouse and had nothing to give but love, she gave a piece or the indication of that love to those who needed it. She was ready to caress or kiss anybody in front of God and everyone, be it a leper or a beggar. Even my mum pulled faces when she saw this. But grandma was such.

leper - прокажённый; человек, которого все сторонятся
pull faces - общ. гримасничать; строить рожи; состроить рожу

She was never angry with anybody, never shouted at anybody, or argued loudly with anyone. At least I never heard. Her voice was always soft and murmuring, and if it was possible for her she always caressed the man or woman she was talking to. Once when I was quite a kid, I jerked away my head from her caressing hands. I am still always ashamed of this, for not having let her love me, or at least let her show her love to me, which she could not live without. Well, what happened had happened. I can’t help. At the same time she was a real Lady, of a sort you could meet only in books. And I am not the only one who said that.

Once I managed to interview one of my remote relatives living now in the USA, and asked her to characterize the society of our prewar little town, and she said: “Well, you know, there were the family of your grandfather, the soul of which was Aunt Ilonka, your grandma, and then all the other people who didn’t count actually”. Sorry but those were not my words. Let me add to this that my grandpa, who was first of all and foremost a gentleman in every way, died in 1952 in a concentration camp far away. As a matter of fact he starved to death. And, as my dad later told us, was buried by a rabbi, because being deeply religious and a believer, a Catholic, his last wish was that by all means let a priest burry him. And there was only one priest in the camp, a Jewish one, a rabbi. But after all a rabbi is also a priest, so his mates asked him to fulfill my grandpa’s last wish. And he did.

To be continued.

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Автор рассылки Костенко Андрей Владимирович.
Этот выпуск подготовили Любовь Абрамова и Dr.Ortutay Peter.

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