Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby

’

�Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,’ he said glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. �I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.’

At this point Miss Baker said: �Absolutely!’ with such suddenness that I started – it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

�I’m stiff,’ she complained, �I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.

�Don’t look at me,’ Daisy retorted, �I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.’

�No, thanks,’ said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, �I’m absolutely in training.’

Her host looked at her incredulously.

�You are!’ He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. �How you ever get anything done is beyond me.

I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she �got done’. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

�You live in West Egg,’ she remarked contemptuously.

�I don’t know a single –’

�You must know Gatsby.’

�Gatsby?’ demanded Daisy. �What Gatsby?’

Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

�Why candles?’ objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. �In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.’ She looked at us all radiantly. �Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.