Tender is the night / Ночь нежна. Книга для чтения на английском языке

”

The noble dignity of Abe’s face took on a certain stubbornness, and he remarked with determination:

“Oh, no.” He paused gravely. “Oh, no, not yet. We’ll have another bottle of champagne.”

“No more for me,” said Dick.

“It’s Rosemary I’m thinking of. She’s a natural alcoholic – keeps a bottle of gin in the bathroom and all that – her mother told me.”

He emptied what was left of the first bottle into Rosemary’s glass. She had made herself quite sick the first day in Paris with quarts of lemonade; after that she had taken nothing with them, but now she raised the champagne and drank at it.

“But what’s this?” exclaimed Dick. “You told me you didn’t drink.”

“I didn’t say I was never going to.”

“What about your mother?”

“I’m just going to drink this one glass.” She felt some necessity for it. Dick drank, not too much, but he drank, and perhaps it would bring her closer to him, be a part of the equipment for what she had to do.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” they said indignantly.

“I knew you’d make a fuss over it and go to a lot of trouble.” She finished the champagne. “So this is the celebration.”

“It most certainly is not,” Dick assured her. “The dinner to-morrow night is your birthday party and don’t forget it. Eighteen – why that’s a terribly important age.

“I used to think until you’re eighteen nothing matters,” said Mary.

“That’s right,” Abe agreed. “And afterward it’s the same way.”

“Abe feels that nothing matters till he gets on the boat,” said Mary. “This time he really has got everything planned out when he gets to New York.” She spoke as though she were tired of saying things that no longer had a meaning for her, as if in reality the course that she and her husband followed, or failed to follow, had become merely an intention.

“He’ll be writing music in America and I’ll be working at singing in Munich, so when we get together again there’ll be nothing we can’t do.”

“Thats wonderful,” agreed Rosemary, feeling the champagne.

“Meanwhile, another touch of champagne for Rosemary. Then she’ll be more able to rationalize the acts of her lymphatic glands. They only begin to function at eighteen.