Фрэнсис Фицджеральд - The Great Gatsby / Великий Гэтсби. Книга для чтения на английском языке

4. “If Chester could make a photo of you in that pose I think the result would be something special.”

5. “Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”

6. “I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.”

7. “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”

8. “I almost married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. But if I hadn’t met Chester, he could be my husband now.”

9. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”

10. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai —”

9. Answer the following questions.

1. Where was the valley of ashes? What was special about it? Why did passengers have to stare at it for half an hour?

2. Did Nick want to see Tom’s mistress? Who forced him to? Where did she live?

3. What can you say about Mr. Wilson? Was he a strong successful man?

4. What did Mrs. Wilson buy after coming to New York?

5. Describe Mrs. Wilson’s apartment. Did Myrtle have good taste? Prove it.

6. Whom did Myrtle invite to the party? Tell some words about every guest.

7. How did Mrs. Wilson react to all compliments? Had her behavior changed since the garage?

8. What did Catherine say about the relationships in the Wilson and Buchanan families? Did Myrtle love her husband? Why, in Catherine’s opinion, couldn’t Tom get a divorce? Was it true?

9. How did Tom and Myrtle get acquainted?

10. What happened in the end of the evening? Who did Nick leave with? Where did they go?

10. Tell about the party from the person of:

a) Myrtle Wilson;

b) Catherine;

c) Mr. McKee.

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I looked at his guests who were diving from the tower of his raft, or sunbathing on the hot sand of his beach. Some guests used to take his two motor-boats, drawing aquaplanes 59 59 aquaplane – акваплан —спортивный плотик,служащий для передвижения спортсмена по воде на буксире за самоходными судами over the foamy waters. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became a bus, transporting parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, worked hard all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and secateurs, repairing the damage of the night before.

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York – every Monday these same oranges and lemons were left in a pyramid of peels at his back door. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.

At least once a fortnight a lot of providers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. Spiced baked hams, salads of multicolored designs, pastry pigs and dark gold turkeys were crowded on buffet tables. In the main hall there was a bar full of gins and liquors.

By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived – a great number of musicians with their trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and flutes, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked in five lines in the driveway, and already the halls and salons and verandas are colorful with bright clothes and hair cut in strange new ways. The bar is in full use, and floating rounds of cocktails go throughout the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and introductions forgotten immediately, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth turns away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing cocktail music, and the opera of voices sounds louder. Laughter is easier minute by minute, caused by any cheerful word. The groups change more quickly, grow with new arrivals, disappear and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who turn up here and there among the more solid ladies, become the center of a group for a moment, and then, excited with triumph, walk on through the sea of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of these girls takes a cocktail out of the air, drinks it for courage and dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary silence; the orchestra leader changes his rhythm specially for her. The party has begun.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests whom he had actually invited. People were not invited – they went there. They got into automobiles which brought them to Gatsby’s door. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission 60 60 with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission – с простодушной непосредственностью, которая сама по себе служила входным билетом .

Gatsby had actually invited me by a surprisingly formal note. It said it would be the honor, if I attended his “little party” that night. He had seen me several times, and had intended to visit me long before, but circumstances had prevented it – signed Jay Gatsby.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around feeling uncomfortable among the people I didn’t know – though here and there was a face I had noticed on the train. As soon as I arrived I made a try to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked about him stared at me in such a surprise, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table – the only place in the garden where a single man could stand without looking alone.

I was on my way to get drunk from simple embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by. 61 61 Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by. – Рада она была или нет, но я почувствовал необходимость ухватиться за кого-нибудь, пока я еще не начал приставать с душевными разговорами к прохожим.

“Hello!” I cried, going toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

“I thought you might be here,” she answered absently as I came up. “I remembered you lived next door to —”

She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute, and listened to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who stopped at the foot of the steps.

“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t win.” That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before. The girls moved on. With Jordan’s golden arm resting in mine, we descended the steps. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble 62 62 each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble – каждый из которых был нам представлен как Мистер Мамбл (mumble – невнятное бормотание) .