One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Damn near half of you guys in here pull compensation, three, four hundred a month and not a thing in the world to do with it but let it draw dust. I thought I might take advantage of this and maybe make both our lives a little more richer. I’m starting level with you. I’m a gambler and I’m not in the habit of losing. And I’ve never seen a woman I thought was more man than me, I don’t care whether I can get it up for her or not. She may have the element of time, but I got a pretty long winning streak goin’ myself.

He pulls off his cap, spins it on his finger, and catches it behind his back in his other hand, neat as you please.

“Another thing: I’m in this place because that’s the way I planned it, pure and simple, because it’s a better place than a work farm. As near as I can tell I’m no loony, or never knew it if I was. Your nurse don’t know this; she’s not going to be looking out for somebody coming at her with a trigger-quick mind like I obviously got. These things give me an edge I like.

“I’m still not sure I – ”

“Just that. A bee in her butt, a burr in her bloomers. Get her goat. Bug her till she comes apart at those neat little seams, and shows, just one time, she ain’t so unbeatable as you think. One week. I’ll let you be the judge whether I win or not.”

Harding takes out a pencil and writes something on the pinochle pad.

“Here. A lien on ten dollars of that money they’ve got drawing dust under my name over in Funds. It’s worth twice that to me, my friend, to see this unlikely miracle brought off.”

McMurphy looks at the paper and folds it. “Worth it to any of the rest of you birds?” Other Acutes line up now, taking turns at the pad. He takes the pieces of paper when they’re finished, stacking them on his palm, pinned under a big stiff thumb. I see the pieces of paper crowd up in his hand.

“You trust me to hold the bets, buddies?”

“I believe we can be safe in doing that,” Harding says. “You won’t be going any place for a while.”

6

One Christmas at midnight on the button, at the old place, the ward door blows open with a crash, in comes a fat man with a beard, eyes ringed red by the cold and his nose just the color of a cherry. The black boys get him cornered in the hall with flashlights.