Воспоминания биржевого спекулянта

Počeo sam da radim čim sam završio osnovnu školu.

I went to work when I was just out of grammar school.

Zaposlio sam se kao dečak koji ispisuje kurseve na tabli u jednoj berzanskoj posredničkoj kancelariji.

I got a job as quotation-board boy in a stock-brokerage office.

Brzo sam računao.

I was quick at figures.

U školi sam tri godine računa savladao za jednu.

At school I did three years of arithmetic in one.

Naročito sam bio dobar u računanju napamet.

I was particularly good at mental arithmetic.

Kao dečak za tablu, ispisivao sam brojeve na velikoj tabli u sobi za

As quotation-board boy I posted the numbers on the big board in the customers’

klijente.

room.

Jedan od klijenata obično je sedeo pored berzanskog telegrafa i naglas izvikivao cene.

One of the customers usually sat by the ticker and called out the prices.

Za mene nikada nisu stizale prebrzo.

They couldn’t come too fast for me.

Brojeve sam oduvek pamtio.

I have always remembered figures.

Bez ikakve muke.

No trouble at all.

U toj kancelariji bilo je mnogo drugih službenika.

There were plenty of other employes in that office.

Naravno, sprijateljio sam se s ostalim momcima,

Of course I made friends with the other fellows,

ali posao koji sam obavljao,

but the work I did,

kad je tržište bilo živo,

if the market was active,

toliko me je zaokupljao od deset ujutru

kept me too busy from ten A.M.

do tri popodne

to three P.M.

da nisam stizao mnogo da pričam.

to let me do much talking.

Uostalom, i nije mi do toga,

I don’t care for it,

bilo kako bilo,

anyhow,

za vreme radnog vremena.

during business hours.

Ali živo tržište nije me sprečavalo da razmišljam o poslu.

But a busy market did not keep me from thinking about the work.

Ti kursevi za mene nisu predstavljali cene akcija,

Those quotations did not represent prices of stocks to me,

toliko i toliko dolara po akciji.

so many dollars per share.

Bili su to brojevi.

They were numbers.

Naravno,

Of course,

nešto su značili.

they meant something.

Neprestano su se menjali.

They were always changing.

Samo me je to i trebalo zanimati —

It was all I had to be interested in —

promene.

the changes.

Zašto su se menjali?

Why did they change?

Nisam znao.

I didn’t know.

Nije me bilo briga.

I didn’t care.

Nisam o tome razmišljao.

I didn’t think about that.

Jednostavno sam video da se menjaju.

I simply saw that they changed.

To je bilo sve o čemu sam morao da mislim pet sati svakog dana i dva subotom:

That was all I had to think about five hours every day and two on Saturdays:

da se neprestano menjaju.

that they were always changing.