Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby

A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing �stunts’ all over the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes[49 - banjo – струнный музыкальный инструмент африканского происхождения] on the lawn.

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

�Your face is familiar,’ he said, politely. �Weren’t you in the First Division during the war?’

�Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry.’

�I was in the Sixteenth until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I’d seen you somewhere before.’

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane, and was going to try it out in the morning.

�Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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