Фрэнсис Скотт Кэй Фицджеральд – The Great Gatsby / Великий Гэтсби. B1-B2 (страница 1)

Ф. С. Фицджеральд

The Great Gatsby / Великий Гэтсби. В1+В2

© Алешина П. Д., адаптация текста, словарь, 2026

© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2026

Chapter I / Глава 1

В юношеские годы, when a person особенно восприимчив, my father gave me some advice, надолго запавший мне в память.

– Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, – he told me, – just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

He didn't say any more, but we have always been communicative, и мне было clear, что думал он гораздо больше, чем сказал. Вот откуда взялась у меня habit к сдержанности в all judgements – a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me и еще чаще делала меня victim матерых надоед. Нездоровый mind is quick to detech всегда сразу чует эту сдержанность, when it appears in a normal person, и спешит за нее уцепиться; еще в колледже меня незаслуженно обвиняли в политиканстве, because самые нелюдимые и замкнутые students поверяли мне свои тайные горе ста. Я вовсе не искал подобного trust – сколько раз, заметив некоторые symptoms, предвещающие очередное интимное признание, я принимался сонно зевать, спешил уткнуться в book или напускал на себя задорно-легкомысленный тон; the intimate revelations of young men, по крайней мере та словесная форма, в которую они облечены, представляют собой, как правило, are usually plagiaristic и к тому же страдают явными недомолвками. Сдержанность в judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget, что (as my father snobbishly suggested) чутье к основным нравственным ценностям отпущено природой не всем в одинаковой мере.

А теперь, похвалившись своей my tolerance, я должен сознаться, что эта терпимость имеет пределы. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world был морально затянут в мундир и держался по стойке «смирно». Я больше не стремился к увлекательным вылазкам с привилегией заглядывать в человеческие души. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was the exemption, – Gatsby, казалось, воплощавшего собой все, что я искренне презирал и презираю. Если мерить personality ее умением себя проявлять, there was something gorgeous about him, какая-то повышенная sensitivity ко всем посулам жизни. Эта способность к мгновенному отклику не имела ничего общего с дряблой впечатлительностью, пышно именуемой “creative temperament”, – it was a gift for hope, романтический запал, which it is not likely I will ever find again. No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; не он, а то, что над ним тяготело, та ядовитая пыль, что вздымалась вокруг его мечты, – вот что заставило меня на время утратить всякий интерес к людским скоротечным sorrows и радостям впопыхах.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, и, по семейному преданию, он ведет свою родословную от the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in the Great War. I enjoyed the контрнаступление that I came back restless. The Middle West now seemed like обтрепанным подолом вселенной; so I decided to go East and learn кредитное дело. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said:

– Why – ye-es.

Father agreed to finance me for a year, у, и вот, после долгих проволочек, I came East, forever, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, но дело шло к summer, а я еще не успел отвыкнуть от a country of wide lawns и ласковой тени trees, и потому, when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together где-нибудь в пригороде, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house – крытую толем хибарку at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, и мне пришлось устраиваться alone. I had a dog – at least I had him for a few days until he ran away – and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, stopped me on the road.

– How do you get to West Egg village? – he asked.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler[1].

Солнце с каждым днем пригревало сильней, и во мне уже крепла знакомая, приходившая каждое summer уверенность, что life was beginning over again with the summer.

It was a matter of chance that I had to rent a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. Twenty miles from the city, на задворках Long Island Sound, самого обжитого куска водного пространства во всем Западном полушарии, вдаются в воду два совершенно одинаковых мыса, разделенных лишь неширокой бухточкой.

I lived at West Egg, the well, the less fashionable of the two. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and сжатый between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. Особенно великолепна была вилла справа – it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy with a tower on one side, and a мраморный swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's особняк. My house was so tiny that nobody noticed it, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour's lawn и приятным сознанием непосредственного соседства миллионеров – в all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I knew Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband was one of those men who reach success at twenty-one. His family were enormously wealthy but now he left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he'd brought целую конюшню of polo ponies from Lake Forest.

Why they came East I don't know. Теперь они решили прочно осесть на одном месте, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it – I had no sight into Daisy's heart. I had no sight into Daisy's heart, but Tom would drift on forever seeking for the dramatic turbulence.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more вычурный than I expected. Ряд высоких French windows прорезал фасад по всей длине; сейчас они были распахнуты навстречу теплому вечернему ветру, и стекла пламенели отблесками золота, а в дверях, широко расставив ноги, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing on the front porch.

He changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a man of thirty с твердо очерченным ртом и довольно надменными манерами. Но в лице главным были глаза: от их блестящего дерзкого взгляда всегда казалось, будто он с угрозой подается вперед. Это было тело, полное сокрушительной силы, – a cruel body.

His speaking voice had хриплый tenor. И даже в разговоре с приятными ему людьми в голосе у него всегда слышалась нотка презрительной отеческой снисходительности, and there were men at New Haven who hated his нрав.

– I've got a nice place here, – he said. – It belonged to Demaine, the oil man. We'll go inside.

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, едва закрепленное в стенах дома высокими окнами at either end. The windows were open.

The only completely неподвижным object in the room was an enormous couch on which there were two young women.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless. The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise, then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

– I'm p-paralysed with happiness, – she said.

She laughed again and held my hand for a moment. She murmured that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.

At any rate, Miss Baker nodded at me and then quickly tipped her head back again.

I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions. I told her how I stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people sent their love through me.

– Do they miss me? – she cried.

– The city безутешен.

– How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow! You ought to see the baby.

– I'd like to.

– She's asleep. She's three years old. Haven't you ever seen her?

– Never.

– Well, you ought to see her. She's —