More translation snippets
More translations from the 1932 novel! Again, these are probably less reliable than they seem - I try to QC the English translation so that it sounds fluent, but I don't know how accurate my Chinese-to-English was to begin with. *scrapes* I apologise for any errors! You can consider these translations void once the good people at LJ get their much more accurate versions out. Nevertheless, onwards!
In this edition: more Gandors in general, and a few snippets about Katie and the origins of the Gandor inheritance.
Gandors in general
Scene background: Previously, BigBadBaddie!Gustavo called to arms four assassins to help him in his Attack Against Everyone: a Mexican girl, an old drunkard, a man in a long coat and the renowned "Felix" - an assassin with glasses and a moustache whose reputation almost rivalled that of Vino's himself. Felix, who refused to accept any mission involving murder due to "previous obligations", was dispatched on a special non-lethal assignment: to bring Roy Maddock and Eve Genoard to Gustavo.
While Felix was off doing his duty, Gustavo summoned the rest of his hired hands and usual underlings. The group of them are now storming the Daily Days information agency - as things are, everyone is preparing for war.
Ed's note: I've cut out a irrelevant few scenes that land in between the relevant bits in order to make this one fit and flow. :D I'll post those translations once I'm able to.
At the Daily Days office, those with power were about to fight a battle to the death.
Today, there was none of the usual noise of the newsroom; everyone present was working quietly. In the Director's office, the highly ranked members of the DD were gathered together, as well as Benjamin (who'd spent the night there), Edith (who'd just come back from looking for Eve) and the Director, who was pouring over some documents. This time the pieces of the puzzle were all beginning to fall together.
'Our sources say that Gustavo is planning to ambush us here today at 2pm.'
'Shouldn't we prepare to fight back?' Nicholas said happily to their troubled Director.
'This time? This time around we'll let the Gandor Family handle it.'
Nicholas looked a bit disappointed at the Director's decision to outsource.
'This comes as a request from Keith Gandor. While being neutral means that we should really handle our own problems, this time we've been implicated too deeply. We need the Gandors to come out to help us handle things.'
Looking to take the edge off of Nicholas's disappointment, the Director raised his voice and continued. 'Being an implicated party, we'll no doubt look at things very subjectively. At this point in time, shouldn't we be careful about our operations instead? Of course, this is my own opinion.' The Director then made his point clear. 'Let's chase Gustavo and the rest of those bastards out of this city. How does everyone feel about that?'
No one present objected, and Benjamin, uncharacteristically enough, cheered.
'It's almost exactly like the case of the immortality elixir from last year -- only that this time, we ourselves are the cause of the situation. Everything has fallen into place- it's because he's made preparations that Gustavo dares to even try this! All our intelligence has been put together, following this all we need to do is wait for the pack of cards to collapse on itself. Until then – we'll do what we can.'
Finishing his speech, the Director took up the phone and made the call to the Gandor Family.
----------------
'I want everyone,' he said afterwards, 'during this period to head to the underground sewers to hide. They lead straight to the police bureau, so should anything happen, flee there.'
The Director gave separate instructions to Nicholas and Elean.
'Get everyone equipped and then have them disperse. The Daily Days has never once in its history stopped operations, and today will be no exception.'
[several scenes have been axed from this translation to move it along a tad]
There was no one on the second floor of the place agency. On the third level, Gustavo waited for people to enter the room he was in. The placed looked like a storage room, with a just couple of chairs and tables haphazardly strewn all over the place.
'What the fuck! Did we lose them? Have they escaped?' Gustavo mumbled angrily to himself.
Just then, the sound of a door being close came from behind Gustavo. Everyone turned to see a sharp-eyed man standing in the doorway. The man raised a hand in greeting and said, 'You've put a lot of effort into getting this far, I see.'
Several of Gustavo's underlings started when they recognised who the man really was.
'Who is this guy?' Gustavo growled.
Upon hearing that, the man at the door expressed some surprise. 'Really, really! You don't even know what your opponent for today looks like? Seems as though we're facing some pretty useless men here. How disappointing.'
'What?'
They were so transfixed by the man that no one in the room managed to react enough to feel insulted. Gustavo looked with askance at his stunned underlings. 'Who is this guy?'
'It it can't be!' one of them stammered, 'h-he should be dead! He – he definitely—that time at the bookstore—his head, his head was – his head was--'
'Cut off. Yes, indeed. But that's not very important; today we're here to negotiate. All three of us have come down in person specially for this. We look forward to asking you a very important question, Mr Gustavo.'
After the man finished speaking, two others emerged from behind the curtains and tables of the room. It looked like they'd been hiding there all along.
'You're not – are you three the Gandor brothers?' While everyone else was still dumbfounded, Gustavo had taken out his gun. 'You're here to negotiate? Negotiate what?”
'Something very simple, Mister Gustavo. In fact, you don't really matter much in this negotiation.' Luck chose to disregard Gustavo, turning and speaking loudly to the ten or so Runorata underlings behind the large man: 'Cutting to the chase- do any of you want to join us?'
There was a stunned silence following that preposterously bold question. Luck smiled.
'You really only need to say yes or no. Easy enough, isn't it?'
Everyone slowly began to react, muttering amongst themselves.
'Are you crazy!' Gustavo laughed. 'These thin—'
What Luck said next stopped Gustavo in his tracks: 'We have already discussed this with Mister Baltoro Runorata.'
Everyone stared at the youngest Gandor.
'What, what did you say?'
'Mister Gustavo, it seems that you've done no small number of things behind your boss's back...'
'……'
'However, most of those things are just small and petty compared to your real transgressions. You sold drugs on our territory, tried to act as middleman for various dealings, and apparently even collected protection fees from places that don't fall under Mr Baltoro's jurisdiction. Am I not correct?'
Every time Gustavo sold drugs to his own trusted customers, he charged them less than the amount he reported to Baltoro, but afterwards those drugs didn't immediately make their way into the hands of the consumers. They were actually passed down to various drug-dealing subordinates, and this process continued several times until the drugs prices'd become massively inflation. In this way, Gustavo was practically embezzling money behind Baltoro's back.'
Gustavo and the others who were involved in the scheme were not happy to hear it brought to light. The Runorata men around them were starting to get agitated. 'SHUT UP!' Gustavo roared. 'You have no proof of anything! You're only trying to provoke us!'
'Oh, proof? I have proof. It's currently being... held in custody.'
'What?'
'We were just waiting for all of you to be gathered here first before informing you of it. At this point in time, our people have already seized all your drug dealerships. Yes, you could say that we are... suppressing them.'
The commotion in the room got louder. There had been rumours floating about that; it turned out that the Gandors had been the ones spreading them for a few days prior in preparation for this meet.
Driving the point home, Luck continued: 'Right now those who will follow us will be granted liberty. We welcome those who want to join us, and Mister Baltoro will not reject those who want to rejoin the true Runorata organisation. However, if you make enemies of us now--' Luck paused and narrowed his eyes. Then he laughed, lightly. '- If you continue to make enemies of us, we'll hand you over to Vino.'
The clamouring chaos immediately dropped into complete silence. Gustavo's underlings seemed stricken by the threat; they looked like they were considering.... Gustavo caught hold of the guy nearest to him. 'What do you think you're going to do?' 'Uh...' the man hesitated. Gustavo used a single hand to grab hold of the person's head before slamming it towards the floor. There was a miserable, sickening sound, and then they could all see the man's broken skull.
The Gandors commented on that. 'Looks like you're either trying to silence your people or just kill them off entirely. That was rather cruel of you; your subordinates may not have appreciated that.”
Gustavo glared hatefully at his cowering underlings before turning to the Gandors. 'I'll just kill you three first,' he said, closing in on Luck and his brothers.
'We were really only here to negotiate. We didn't even bring guns.' 'And if you use guns, the police will come down hard. It's not to either of our benefits.' 'Rightly said.' 'You could say that the first person to pull out a gun loses.' 'That's not a bad way of deciding things -'
Haha!
Gustavo laughed and said, 'Fine - then I lose!'
There was a gunshot. The sound reverberated through the room as Gustavo saw a fine mist of blood spray in front of his eyes.
Luck's head had been blown apart by the shot; his body lost balance and hit the wall.
'The rest of you are next! Arm yourselves - I won't hesitate!' Gustavo snarled, waving his gun at Keith.
Berga - without so much as blinking - walked towards Luck's side. He looked down at the remains of his brother's head as if he were waiting for something.
'Ahhahaha!'Gustavo cackled. 'Take your time to say your goodbyes to your brother!' He continued to advance towards Keith.
Then he heard something tremble.
'M-mister G-G-Gustavo! Wa-wait – look out!' a subordinate of his stammered. 'What is it, are you all trying to get me killed?' 'No-no! That--that!!'
Gustavo turned back to look at his frightened underlings. He was shocked by what he ended up seeing before him.
It was a very strange sight. It felt surreal, as if they were watching the landing of the man on the moon on TV. Soundlessly, what was left of Luck's head slowly gathered back together. Red bits of flesh, white pieces of bone, even the pinkish bits of brain matter were drawn together as if hoarded by ants. Gradually it reconstituted into meat and skeletal bone, teeth and eyes slowly emerging from within the mess.
'Wh-what the hell is this?' Gustavo felt his throat constrict. He swallowed thickly.
'Oh, he's up!' Seeing Luck regenerated, Berga used his hand to gently knock his brother on the head.
'Un.' As if he'd just woken up from a deep sleep, Luck got up and stretched. Keith and Berga looked at him without any surprise written on their faces. Luck smiled. 'I've become a tad slow witted, considering I couldn't even duck that shot.'
Nonchalantly, Luck brushed himself off and resumed his address of the stunned-silent occupants of the room. 'Well, now. Either join us, or die.'
Faced with the sort of monstrosity that they thought only possible in movies, the underlings couldn't respond. Their morale had totally crumbled; they had no will to continue fighting.
Suddenly, out of the crowd came a figure dashing towards Luck. An arc of silver was seen to fly towards his hand.
Wu ……
Luck's sliced coat sleeve fell to the ground, and a spurt of red flowed forth. He grabbed his severed hand before it could fall to the floor. The limb reattached itself.
Seeing the blood flood stop almost immediately, the attacker – the Mexican girl - whistled. 'What an interesting body you've got there, friend.'
Luck'd narrowed his eyes at the unexpected ambush, yet he was still calm when he said, 'If you want to be regarded as a friend, shouldn't you be fighting on our side, Miss?'
Hearing Luck's words, the girl shook her head childishly. 'That would be pointless, friend. If I did that, I wouldn't be able to see Vino, yes? However, if I stay here and kill you people, then I'll surely get to meet him.'
Aah, so that was what it was about. Luck got it.
Even though he knew she was probably a professional assassin, he'd never have thought that there were killers of this calibre outside of Claire. Looking more closely, there was also a decidedly composed man holding a bottle of whiskey in the crowd, and though he looked drunk it seemed rather suspicious.
Adding to the series of interruptions, a man suddenly came in through the door. “I'm sorry for interrupting!"
It was the man with the glasses, and he'd brought a man and a woman along with him. Luck and Keith both didn't recognise either of the two. The woman could've been called a girl, though she looked more like what you'd call a young lady; the other was an unhealthy looking young man. Following them, a guy wearing a long coat also entered the room, and he was glaring at the man with the glasses.
The man with the glasses said, 'Here are Eve Genoard and Roy Maddock.'
Gustavo, confident that the appearance of Felix would work in his favour, calmed down. 'You've done me a huge favour, Felix!'
'I'll take my leave, then!'
'Wait! I still have something to request of you……not killing, no. I just want you to keep these people here. That should still be within your job scope!'
Felix shrugged. 'It's doable.'
Gustavo laughed in delight – Felix was his trump card. Though for some reason, the Gandor brothers were still just looking blandly at that guy.
'Thank you, Mister Felix Morgan. As for your payment, name your price!'
'30,000,000 dollars.'
'What? ' Gustavo had never even heard of a unit of money that large before.
'For these three? I'll need that sort of a payment. Haha!' Felix said as he sent Roy and Eve out into the corridor, instructing them both to hide.
'What are you doing?!' Gustavo roared.
'I only agreed to bring those two over, nothing more, nothing less.'
Berga - who hadn't said anything up till now - interrupted Felix in a deadpan: 'Hey you - why the fuck are you dressed up like that?'
'?!!?'
In the wake of Gustavo's confusion, the Mexican girl swung her knife at Luck again, yelling: 'Tell me where Vino is, friend!'
The man with the glasses raised his hand. 'Are you looking for me?'
The entire room froze.
"Felix" took off his glasses and removed his false moustache, revealing a very young looking man.
He extended his hand and greeted the rest of the room.
'How is everyone? I am Felix Morgan – also known as "Vino", or you can call me the "RAIL TRACER".'
As he said this, his attitude and tone changed completely – something violent came over Vino. Gustavo began to realise exactly how much trouble he was in, and went red with fear and anger.
'Bu- wait, wait, damn it, Gandors! Did you people set this up from the start!?'
Luck looked at the explosive Gustavo impassively, and asked the newly-revealed Claire: 'Claire, who is this "Felix"?'
'I already said that Claire is dead. I am called Felix Morgan now. Or, more accurately, I've bought that name from the previous Felix.'
'I don't get you!' Berga couldn't hide his confusion in the face of this guy who said he was Claire but said he was Vino but said he was Felix –
'Didn't Luck tell me this a few days earlier? A dead man can't marry! I thought that was pretty important.'
No one else in the room really got why Vino was saying any of this.
'So, yesterday, I acquired two pieces of information. One was about the girl whom I am looking for, and the other was concerning a guy who wanted to put his past behind him. So had a little chat with him, and we struck up a deal. He's a good guy, that original Felix. After all of that, these people came around looking for assassins to hit Keith – I wanted to see exactly how strong these rivals of mine would be, so...' As he was speaking, Vino's hand suddenly blurred. One moment they saw a gun appear in his hand, the next they hear two loud gunshots.
BANG--
Just as the shots sounded, there was a noise of a whiskey bottle hitting the floor. The old drunkard fell to the ground, a gun still smoking in his hand. There was a bullethole in the wall right behind Claire; he'd just missed the young man by an inch.
Maybe this Vino was as much of a monster as Luck and his brothers. Or maybe he was worse.
Gustavo's underlings too frightened to react. Vino, like a true actor performing for an audience, grinned and said:
'You ain't heard nothing yet!'
Tiny Katie and co. Snippet
Background: Roy Maddock's been helping Eve Genoard run around in search of Gandors. He's brought her to the family's headquarters, but it looks like no one's around right now... Meanwhile, the Gandors themselves seem to have been working too damned hard.
Standing in the doorway was a beautiful woman of around thirty. She was willowy of build and had a head full of short, golden hair. Her skin was fair like porcelain, as though she were some sort of a doll that'd break under too much force.
'W-we're here- here to see Gan-Gandor—'
'There are three people here who go by the name Gandor. If you count my sister and myself, there're five.'
Startled by this elegant response, Roy stammered uncertainly: 'T-then which one are you?'
The woman answered quietly, 'My name is Katie. I'm the eldest Gandor-- Keith Gandor's wife.'
By the time Keith and the others returned to the office, there was only Tic playing with his scissors.
'Ah – you're back! Miss Katie came around earlier. I told her that you were out, and so she went home.'
Keith frowned when he heard that. 'Ah, I originally said that I would go home today.'
'You've been at work all through the end of last year and the new year itself, haven't you?' '...'
Keith shook his head and hung his coat and hat up on the wall. Whatever the case – it still wasn't possible for him to go home tonight, it seemed.
'Forget it, it's too late for you to head home now anyway.'
'That Claire is too damned slow about things. He wouldn't have brought that person on a trip on the nightly express train, would he?'
'Considering it's Claire, that's fully possible.'
'Honestly, that guy's just weird. Even said something about wanting to "poke around with something about the information agency"'.
Claire – who was typically very composed – had been walking around with a huge smile on his face the last few days, as though he were thinking about something that made him extremely happy.
'Ah. That'd be him asking about the woman he wants to marry, yes?'
[cutting forward again!]
Keith – eldest of the three Gandor brothers – had a house on Manhattan's West Side. Up until last year, the three brothers had all stayed together in an apartment nearby, but when Berga'd got married they'd gone their separate ways. Only Luck remained in the apartment now. 'Eat up! I originally wanted to have dinner with my husband, but it seems that he's been caught up lately.' 'A-ah, thank you very much.' Roy, who hadn't eaten much in the last few days, attacked the new year's dinner laid out in front of him ravenously.
Steak from Australia, sashimi from Japan, Italian pasta – there were all sorts of food at the table. Eve, who had better manners than Roy, picked up her cutlery. 'This all looks so good!' she exclaimed, in spite of her usual reticence and currently conflicted feelings.
This woman, Katie, looked totally unlike a woman married to a Mafioso – but she'd said that it was the case, so they really had no choice but to accept it. Though in truth – this woman was married to the man who'd killed Eve's own brother, Dallas. Eve really didn't know how to react in the face of all of this.
'I'm glad! I was worried that it wouldn't suit your tastes.' Katie smiled. She certainly seemed very warm, but Eve and Roy got the feeling that she was shrewder than she appeared.
'So, let's continue our conversation from before, then –'
Eve, wishing to sort out her emotions, went straight to the point. It looked like Keith was supposed to come home to have dinner with Katie to celebrate the new year, but things had been busy the last few days and hadn't been coming home. 'When could I see your husband, do you know?'
'About that... He's the sort that has all sorts of unexpected situations to deal with all the time. But if he's settled all his disputes, most of the time he comes home every day.'
'Disputes?'
'I don't really know myself. Keith doesn't talk about work at home, so... I should think he won't be coming back very early tonight.' Talking about her absent husband, Katie somehow sounded both lonely and yet still quietly... happy.
'He... He's with the mafia, right?'
PFFT--- Hearing Eve's question, Roy spat out a mouthful of tea. 'Miss E-Eve! I think that was a bit too direct!'
'Oh, but...'
Seeing the antics of the two, Katie laughed slightly.
'No, you're right, though his cover job is that of managing that jazz club of theirs.' Perhaps it was out of sympathy for Roy and Eve -- Katie began to talk about her husband's work.
'This business of theirs was originally built up by their father. At some point in the past, the boss that their father worked for suddenly decided to give away his territory. It seemed rather strange, but nonetheless their father gratefully accepted it when the turf was given to him to handle. Immediately after that, a series of turf wars broke out, cutting the territory down in size. Coincidentally, Gandor territory somehow ended up on the edge of the territories of several other, much larger mafia families – it got considered as a sort of "border ground", almost a buffer zone. Keith's father's boss probably knew that things were going to turn out that way, that's why he bailed in order to save his reputation – he gave their father the territory and all of the problems that would come along with it. Apparently that old boss is still on the run.'
Katie waited for Roy and Eve to finish eating before recounting the rest of the story.
'However, this territory had more or less been practically stripped down to nothing, hadn't it? But Keith's father – a very determined man – always reckoned that they should never let the turf that had been given to them be swallowed up by the other families. He died young, probably because he worked so hard to defend this place. Keith and his brothers inherited their father's territory - and his legacy. And so things've worked out to how they are today. There are disputes here practically every day – even I've nearly been killed twice.'
'Why-why are you still living with such a dangerous person, then?'
Roy knew that was an extremely impolite question, but he couldn't help but ask it anyway. Considering that it was Katie, she'd probably answer them anyway. The both of them watched her as she walked over to the organ and lay her fine, elegant fingers on the keyboard.
The music began to flow from the organ seemed to encompass everything that Roy and Eve felt.
-------
Translator spazz section:
Notes:
A lot of the time, Felix is actually referred to in the story by another nickname - "bian li wu" (Chinese) "benriya" (Japanese), or "convenience store". I have no idea what that should be in English, and considering that "Vino" was originally translated as "Grape Wine", I decided to play safe and translate all instances of the nickname as "Felix" in this piece. *dies* Anyone have any idea? I don't want to end up calling him a combini or anything. Claire needs to stick to one name, for serious, yes.
I'm not sure if I translated the Gandor Family History section as accurately as I'd like - the terms were all over the place, so you guys might want to wait for the LJ translations before taking anything as canon. *___*
And -- Did anyone else read what Katie said ("there are three people here who go by the name Gandor - five, if you include my sister and myself") as a hint that Berga married Katie's sister?! Or maybe she just means sister-in-law. For a language that has ten trillion family-level denotations, Chinese can sort of fail. *___*
Then there's Claire asking for 30,000,000 in the non!inflation 1930s. *grins like a loon*
Also! laylah, I'll get to those Eve translations soon, promise! So much stuff to get out in between the two major chapters and the ending. *___*