The One from the Other

by Philip Kerr

disingenuous,

dissimulado

spiteful

rancoroso

alacrity.

vivacidade

Shrapnel

estilhaços (de bomba)

jaundice

amarelo dos olhos

That’s what happens when you’ve been married for a while. You stop saying what you mean. That’s the only reason people ever stay married. All successful marriages are based on some necessary hypocrisies. It’s only the unsuccessful ones where people always tell the truth to each other.

regal

majestoso

After all I had seen and done in Russia, I had less respect for human life than of old. My own included. Not that I would ever have made much of a Quaker. In peacetime I had killed several men. I’d taken no pleasure in it. But when you have killed once it becomes easier to kill again. Even a priest.

run-in

desavença

lurch,

leave in a lurch = deixar desamparado

slavish.

servil

martinets,

alguém que demanda estrita obediência

pewter

cinza com tonalidade de cobre ou chumbo

perforce,

forçosamente

smudge

mancha esfumaçado

‘Schiller? Sure. He’s the guy who said that truth lives on in the midst of deception. We keep that quotation over the office door. He’s the patron saint of detectives everywhere.’

zither

cítara

maimed.

mutilado

clubfoot,

pé torto

crone,

mulher feia

I myself had found it all hard to comprehend – that we, perhaps the most civilized nation on earth, could have done such appalling things in the name of medical science. Hard to comprehend, yes. But not so hard to believe. After my own experiences on the Russian front, I came to believe human beings were capable of an unlimited degree of inhumanity. Perhaps that – our very inhumanity – is what makes us human most of all.

noose

laço ,forca