Kitabı oku: «Сборник лучших произведений американской классической литературы. Уровень 4», sayfa 6
“They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.”
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly. I began to walk about the room, examining various objects. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.
“Who's this?”
“That's Mr.Dan Cody46, old sport. He's dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.”
There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume – taken apparently when he was about eighteen.
“I adore it!” exclaimed Daisy.
After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the hydroplane and the midsummer flowers – but outside Gatsby's window it began to rain again so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.
Almost five years! His hand took hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. They had forgotten me, Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and went out of the room, leaving them there together.
Chapter 6
James Gatz47 – that was his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment – when he saw Dan Cody's yacht. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
His parents were unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. So he invented Jay Gatsby, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
Dan Cody was fifty years old then, he was a millionaire, and an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. To the young Gatz the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. Cody asked him a few questions and found that he was clever, and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white trousers and a yachting cap.
He was employed as a steward, skipper, and secretary. The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. In Boston Dan Cody died.
He told me all this very much later.
For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone. But finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.I hadn't been there two minutes48 when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink.
“I'm delighted to see you,” said Gatsby. “Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. “I'll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”
He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there.
“I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan. I know your wife,” continued Gatsby.
“That so?49“
Tom turned to me.
“You live near here, Nick?”
“Next door.”
“That so?”
Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
“These things excite me SO,” she whispered.
“Look around,” suggested Gatsby. “You must see the faces of many people you've heard about.”
Daisy and Gatsby danced.I remember being surprised50 by his graceful, conservative fox-trot – I had never seen him dance51 before. Then they came to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden.
The party was over. I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front of the house.
“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. “Some big bootlegger?”
“Where'd you hear that?” I inquired.
“I didn't hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.”
“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.
He was silent for a moment.
“I'd like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. “And I thinkI'll make a point of finding out52.”
“I can tell you right now,” answered Daisy. “He owned some drug stores, a lot of drug stores. He built them up himself.”
The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.
Gatsby was silent.
“I feel far away from her,” he said.
He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say, “I never loved you.”
“You can't repeat the past.”
“Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Whyof course53 you can!”
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house.
“I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly.
