Фрэнсис Фицджеральд – The Great Gatsby / Великий Гэтсби. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 2)
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started17 – it was the first word she had said since I came into the room. I think it surprised her as much as it did me because she yawned and stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
I looked at Miss Baker. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slim, small-breasted girl. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite curiosity out of a charming, discontented face.18 It seemed to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” asked Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could answer that he was my neighbor dinner was announced. The two young women showed us the way onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles were lit on the table.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes focused on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it. You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t want to, but you
“I hate that word hulking,” objected Tom angrily, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, but that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained20.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of impressive wine. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?” I meant nothing special by this phrase, but the reaction was unexpected.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” said Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. If we don’t look out the white race will be – will be completely underwater. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting a very deep thinker,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them.”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us21, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun22. Suddenly, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch. Daisy leaned toward me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear; Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice enthusiastic and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a – of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only improvising. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table, excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance without any meaning. I was about to speak when she said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued murmur was audible23 in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of understandability, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ended altogether.
“Is something happening?” I asked innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew. Tom’s got some woman in New York. She might have the decency24 not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had understood her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table. Daisy sat down and cried with tense gayety: “I looked out-doors for a minute. There’s a nightingale singing away —” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and, as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom, the subject of the stables and all other subjects, disappeared into air. I realized that I wanted to look directly at every one, and yet to keep off all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker was able to put the fifth guest out of mind.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker walked back into the library, while, trying to look pleasantly interested, I followed Daisy to the porch in front, where we sat down side by side on a wicker settee25.
Daisy took her face in her hands and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet twilight. I saw that unquiet emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some calming questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather weakly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and – eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about – things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling26, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and cried. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ ”
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so. And I
I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said27. It made me worried, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to get some emotion from me.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from
“To be continued,” she said, throwing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.” She stood up. “Ten o’clock,” she remarked, as though finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy.
“Oh – you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar – its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many pictures of the sporting life at Hot Springs and Palm Beach29. I had heard some unpleasant story of her too, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you?”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon30.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact, I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of – oh – fling you together31. You know – lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat —”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “Her family oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Did you give Nick a little heart-to-heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.