The CaretakerのJosephは仕事をさぼっていたので雇主のTwymanはカンカンに怒っています。
There is shouting in the main house. He watches Twyman stride across the lawn.
Cowboy boots thud upon the stairs. Already Twyman is bellowing.
"The roof? The floors are flooded! The walls are buckling! The mower's rusted to hell!"
Joseph wipes his glasses with his fingers. "I know," he says. "It is not good."
"buckling" の元の動詞は "buckle" で、そうなるとシートベルトしか思い浮かべませんが、この "buckling" は何でしょう？ "buckle" で辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Bend and give way under pressure or strain: the earth buckled under the titanic stress: Bend (something) out of shape: a giant oak buckles the sidewalk
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to bend something or become bent, often as a result of force, heat, or weakness: The intense heat from the fire had caused the factory roof to buckle.
"buckle" にはこういう意味もあるのですね。
A highway patrolman flags down a car that's weaving from lane to lane.
"Licence and registration, please," the cop barks through the window.
The driver hands them over.
"Look," says the policeman, brandishing the papers. "It says here plain as day that you should be wearing glasses."
As he begins writing a ticket the driver blurts out, "But I have contacts!"
The cop replies, "I don't care who you know, you're still getting a ticket."
Reader's Digest 10月号にReader's Digest 100-Word Story Competitionの案内記事がありました。
Enter your stories - which should be original, unpublished and exactly 100 words long (99-worders will be disqualified, hyphenated words count as one) at www.rdasia.com/100-word-story or post to the adress on page 6 by December 31, 2014.
...
We cannot acknowledge or return your story. Do not send SAEs.
注： SAEは stamped addressed envelope or self-addressed envelopeの略。12/5/2013に取り上げました。
短編のThe Caretakerを読んでいます。波乱万丈と言うか、主人公の環境と境遇が次々と大きく変わり中々面白い話です。主人公のJosephは結局米国に亡命し、広大な敷地の中にある大きな屋敷のCaretakerになりました。冬の季節はJosephの雇い主は来ません。Josephは寝てばかり。夢を見ています。
Warblers in the fog, ladybugs traversing the windows, fiddleheads nosing their way up through the forest floor--spring. He crosses the yard with the blanket over his shoulders and examines the first pale sleeves of crocusses rising from the lawn. "fiddleheads" はバイオリンの頭を意味している様ですが、文脈からすると春に地面から出てくる植物の様です。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (also fiddlehead fern) North American The young, curled, edible frond of certain ferns.: These are fiddleheads, the young shoots of the ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, and the cinnamon fern, Osmunda cinnamonum.
・Vocabulary.com: New World fern having woolly cinnamon-colored spore-bearing fronds in early spring later surrounded by green fronds; the early uncurling fronds are edible: Dinners consisted of fried wild boar, fiddlehead ferns and sautéed, burgundy-red ginger flowers.
ゼンマイの様ですね。確かに "fiddleheads" を思わせる形をしています。
ここまで書いて前にも調べたことがある気がしました。村上春樹のPinball, 1973にも "fiddlehead" が出てきて調べていました（12/1/2012）。
今は短編集The Shell Collectionの中の短編The Caretakerを読んでいます。
内戦の続くナイジェリアで主人公Josephの母親も犠牲者になった様です。Josephは何か月も母親の行方を捜しましたがついに諦めてナイジェリアから逃れます。
Twenty times he is stopped and harassed; at makeshift checkpoints soldiers press the muzzles of rifles into his chest and ask if he is Liberian, if he is a Krahn, why he is not helping them fight the Krahns. Before they let him go they spit on his shirt. He hears that a band of guerillas wearing Donald Duck masks has begun eating the organs of its enemies; he hears about terrorists in football cleats trampling the bellies of pregnant women.
"football cleats" の "cleat" はロープを括りつける為の船についているT字型の金具（大昔ヨットに乗っていた頃に覚えた）あるいは9/9/2013に取り上げた "belay" の説明文 "fix (a running rope) round a cleat, rock, pin, or other object, to secure it" に出てきた金具はいずれもロープと関係がありますが、この "cleat" はロープとは関係が無さそうです。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (cleats) North American Athletic shoes with a cleated sole, typically used when playing football.: He shows no signs of slowing down at the age of 35, when most players have traded their cleats for slippers or golf spikes.
・Vocabulary: a metal or leather projection (as from the sole of a shoe); prevents slipping: A soccer store in suburban Dallas donated cleats to players with worn-out footwear.
"cleats" はサッカーシューズの底についているスパイク（少なくとも日本ではラグビーシューズや野球のシューズでもスパイクと呼ばれていると思う）と同じですね。
短編 July Fourthを読んでいます。
On June twenty-seventh they got their first muskie in a shallow shoal on a Rapala they had run through that water fifty times or more. It was big, probably thirty-five inches, with faded green gills and mahogany fins. The Americans cheered, brained it with the butt of a wine bottle and resumed their angling with a renewed verve.
上に出てきた "brained" は文脈からワインのビンで魚の頭を打ったのだと分かりますが、 "brain" にそんな怖い意味・用法があるのか辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Hit (someone) hard on the head with an object: she brained me with a rolling pin
・Collins English Dictionary: to smash the skull of
ありましたね。
今は短編集The Shell Collectionの中の短編July Fourthを読んでいます。
Someone else declared that Teddy Roosevelt once pulled a fifteen-pound bluegill from a Venitian canal, and after that the group grew silent, picturing stout Teddy muscling a panfish the size of a manhole cover into a wobbling gondola, sun blazing in one spectacle lens.
米国人と英国人で７月４日までにどちらが大きな魚を釣れるか賭けをした話ですが、上の引用個所に出てきた "panfish" は何の魚でしょうか？ 辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A fish suitable for frying whole in a pan, especially one caught by an angler rather than bought.: There is no benefit from hanging an entire shrimp off a hook when fishing for coastal panfish.
・Merriam-Webster: a small food fish (as a sunfish) usually taken with hook and line and not available on the market
辞書の説明によると余り大きな魚ではないようですが、小説ではマンホールの蓋ほどの大きさとあります。釣り人の話はどうしても針小棒大になるのでしょうか。
短編集The Shell Collectionの中の短編July Fourthを読んでいます。
There were the standard provocations: tequila, reminders of the Marshall Plan, rudely phrased questions about the queen's gender and the president's bedside fancies. It mounted to a challenge, as these things do, and a contest was born. Limeys vs. Yanks. Old World vs. New.
"Limeys" は初めて見る言葉ですが、Limeys : Yanks = Old World : New の比例式となっているので "Limeys" は "Brits" もしくはEnglish Peopleを意味していると推定できますが、辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: (chiefly derogatory) A British person.: Well done especially to the Limeys, whose robot sub cut the Russian submersible free from the wires that had trapped it.
・Collins Dictionary: 1.a British person 2.a British sailor or ship: Word Origin: abbreviated from C19 lime-juicer, because British sailors were required to drink lime juice as a protection against scurvy
英国の船乗りがライムジュースを壊血病対策に飲んでいたので "Limeys" ですか。
そういえばフランス人の事を "frog" (derogatory) と言いますが、フランス人は蛙をよく食べる（食べた）のでしょうか？
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