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

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you ten dollars.”

      The Airedale (without any doubts, there was an Airedale among the dog’s ancestors, though its feet were surprisingly white) changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture46.

      “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.

      “That dog? That dog’s a boy.”

      “Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it,” said Tom decisively.

      We drove over to Fifth Avenue.

      “Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”

      “No, you don’t,” said Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”

      “Come on,” she said. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. People who ought to know say she’s very beautiful.”

      “Well, I’d like to, but —”

      The cab stopped at one of apartment houses. Throwing a homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and other things she bought, and went haughtily in.

      The apartment was on the top floor – a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it47, so that to move about was to stumble continually over. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph of what seemed to be a hen, but when you saw it from a distance it transformed into a bonnet with an old lady looking from under it. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table. Mrs. Wilson was first busy with the dog. A lazy elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

      I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened was like in the mist. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some. When I came back they had disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living room. Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names) reappeared, company began to arrive at the apartment door.

      The sister, Catherine, was a slim, chatty girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white48. She had plucked her eyebrows and then drew them again at a more frivolous angle but nature tried to return their previous form so her face looked indistinctly. When she moved about there was a continuous clicking thanks to pottery bracelets that jingled up and down upon her arms.

      Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. Later I got to know that he was a photographer and had made the photo of Mrs. Wilson’s mother – the old lady in the bonnet – which was on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

      Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now dressed in an elegant afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she walked about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also changed. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage turned into impressive arrogance. Her laughter, her gestures became more violently feigned moment by moment.

      “My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to take care of my feet, and when she gave me the bill I was shocked.”

      “I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”

      Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in contempt.

      “It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just put it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”

      “But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” continued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester could make a photo of you in that pose I think the result would be something special.”

      We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who moved a strand of hair away from her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee viewed her intently with his head on one side, and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

      “I should change the light,” he said after a moment. We all looked at the subject again, after that Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

      “You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.”

      “I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair. “These people! You have to keep after them all the time.” She looked at me and laughed pointlessly.

      The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

      “Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she asked. “I live at West Egg.”

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

      “I live next door to him.”

      “Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s49. That’s where all his money comes from.”

      “Really?”

      She nodded.

      Mrs. McKee pointed suddenly at Catherine:

      “Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she said, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom.

      “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.50”

      “Myrtle, you’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him.” Tom’s lips moved silently for a moment as he invented “George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump, or something like that.”

      Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear:

      “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to51.”

      “Can’t they?”

      “Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”

      “Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”

      The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had overheard the question, and it was violent and rude.

      “You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again.

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