Читать книгу Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby онлайн

“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai…”

Making a short movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices. Mr. McKee awoke from his sleep and went toward the door. I took my hat and followed him.

“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“All right,” I agreed, “I'll be glad to.”

Then I was lying half asleep on the bench at the Pennsylvania Station, and waiting for the four o'clock train.

There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his gardens men and girls came and went like moths. In the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city. And on Mondays eight servants toiled all day with mops and brushes and hammers, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Every Friday five boxes of oranges and lemons arrived from New York. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.

By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived – oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. Floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

Now the orchestra is playing cocktail music. Laughter is easier, the groups change more swiftly.

When I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited – they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform gave me a formal note from his employer – the honor would be entirely Jay Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night.