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

Chapter II

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile. This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke.

But above the gray land and the spasms of cheerless dust which move endlessly over it, you notice, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. These eyes are blue and gigantic. There is no face, but, instead, the eyes look from a pair of enormous yellow glasses which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wild joker of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness35, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, that became a little paler because of many paintless days under sun and rain, overhang over the solemn ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges go through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the sad scene for half an hour. It was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.

Everyone who knew him insisted upon the fact that Tom had an affair. His acquaintances were shocked by the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her – but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ash heaps he jumped to his feet and, taking me by the elbow, literally forced me from the car36.

“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”

I think he’d eaten a lot for lunch, and violently wanted to take me with him. I followed him and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick. It contained three shops; one of them was for rent and another was an all night restaurant; the third was a garage – Repairs. George B. Wilson, Cars bought and sold – and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was poor and bare; the only car visible was a dust-covered Ford. The owner himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste37. He was a blond, spiritless man, weak, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a shade of hope appeared in his light blue eyes.

“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him cheerfully on the shoulder. “How’s business?”

“I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you going to sell me that car?”

“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”

“Works pretty slow, don’t he?38”

“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”

“I don’t mean that,” answered Wilson quickly. “I just meant —”

His voice faded off and Tom looked impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door39. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly fat, but she carried her overweight body sensuously as some women can. Her face contained no shade of beauty, but there was an immediate vitality about her that you couldn’t miss. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him right in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

“Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity40 – except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

“I want to see you,” said Tom imperatively. “Get on the next train.”

“All right.”

We waited for her down the road and out of sight.

“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

“Awful.”

“It does her good to get away. Wilson thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so stupid he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York. She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York41. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle42, and in the station drugstore some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, she let four taxicabs drive away before she chose a new one, lavender-colored, and in this we climbed into. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and tapped on the front glass.43

“I want to get one of those dogs for the apartment,” she said imperatively.

We backed up to a gray old man who was selling very recent puppies of a doubtful breed.

“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly.

“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”

“I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t think you got that kind?”

The man looked doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up44.

“That’s no police dog,” said Tom.

“No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale45. Look at that coat. That’s a dog that’ll never catch cold, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is it?”

“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost 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. “It’s really his wife who is in their way. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.”

Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

“When they do get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West to live for a while until it blows over.”

“It would be more sensible to go to Europe.”

“Oh, do you like Europe?” she asked surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo. I went over there with another girl. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we lost all money in two days in the private game rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you.”

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean52 – then the high voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.

“I almost made a mistake, too,” she continued energetically. “I almost married a little kike53 who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. But if I hadn’t met Chester, he could be my husband now.”

“Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that’s the difference between your case and mine.”

“Why did you, Myrtle?” asked Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”

“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she answered. “I thought he knew something about good manners but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe54.”

“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.

“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle with anger. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”

She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

“The only crazy I was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came to get it back one day when he was out.” She looked around to see who was listening. “ ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. This is the first I ever heard about it. But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried so much all afternoon.”

“She really ought to get away from him,” told me Catherine. “They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Tom’s the first sweetie she ever had.”

The bottle of whiskey – a second one – was now constantly wanted by all present people, excepting Catherine, who “felt just as good on nothing at all.” Tom rang for the janitor and sent him for some famous sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the Park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became involved in some wild argument which pulled me back into my chair.

Myrtle sat close to me, and suddenly her warm breath told me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train.55 I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’ ”

She turned to Mrs. McKee and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.

“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m tired of it. I’ve got to get another one tomorrow. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a hair wave, and a collar for the dog, and a wreath with black silk flowers for mother’s grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t forget all the things I got to do.”

It was nine o’clock – then I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair with his fists on his lap, like a photograph of an important man. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to time groaning weakly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face, discussing in passionate voices if Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name.

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

Making a short skilled movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand56.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s voices scolding, and a high voice full of pain over all this noise. Mr. McKee awoke from his sleep and went toward the door. When he had gone halfway he turned around and looked at the scene – his wife and Catherine were scolding and calming Myrtle and constantly stumbling here and there among the crowded furniture. They tried to help despairing figure on the couch, who was bleeding fluently. Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat, I followed.

“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we went down in the elevator.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

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

…I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

“Beauty and the Beast… Loneliness… Old Grocery Horse… Brook’n Bridge57…”

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune58, and waiting for the four o’clock train.

1. Read the chapter and choose the right answer.

1. Nick first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress because

a) Tom drove him specially to her house to acquaint them.

b) They went to New York by train and it occasionally stopped near her house.

c) She came to Tom’s house.

2. Mr. Wilson wanted

a) to buy one of Tom’s cars.

b) to repair Tom’s car.

c) to sell a car to Tom.

3. How old was Mrs. Wilson?

a) about 25

b) about 30

c) about 35

4. What pet did Mrs. Wilson buy in New York?

a) a puppy

b) a kitten

c) a parrot

5. How many times in his life had Nick been drunk?

a) only one time

b) two times

c) three or four times

6. Chester McKee was

a) a painter.

b) a designer of dresses.

c) a photographer.

7. Why did Myrtle marry Mr. Wilson?

a) because she thought he was rich.

b) because she loved him.

c) because she thought he was a gentleman.

8. Tom and Myrtle first met

a) sitting opposite each other in the train to New York.

b) trying to catch a taxi.

c) getting into a subway train.

9. When Myrtle continued to repeat Daisy’s name Tom

a) shouted at her.

b) slapped her in the cheek.

c) hit her on the nose.

10. Nick ended the party sleeping

a) on Myrtle’s couch.

b) on the bed at the McKees’.

c) on the train station.

2. Practice the pronunciation of these words.

grotesque [grəʊˈtesk]

enormous [ɪˈnɔ:məs]

solemn [ˈsɒləm]

acquaintances [əˈkweɪntənsɪz]

persistent [pəˈsɪstənt]

impatiently [ɪmˈpeɪʃəntlɪ]

sensuously [ˈsensjʊəslɪ]

vitality [vaɪˈtælɪtɪ]

doubtful [ˈdaʊtfʊl]

enthusiastically [ɪnˌθjuːzɪˈæstɪk(ə)lɪ]

indistinctly [ɪndɪˈstɪŋktlɪ]

feminine [ˈfemənən]

languid [ˈlæŋgwəd]

arrogance [ˈærəgəns]

adorable [əˈdɔ:rəbl]

nephew [ˈnevju]

twilight [ˈtwaɪlaɪt]

advertisement [ədˈvε:təsmənt]

artificial [ˌɑ:təˈfɪʃəl]

furniture [ˈfε:rnɪʧə]

tapestried [ˈtæpɪstrɪd]

despair [dɪsˈpεə]

triumphantly [traɪˈʌmfəntlɪ]

elaborateness [ɪˈlæbərɪtnəs]

ambiguously [æmˈbɪgjuəslɪ]

massage [məˈsɑ:ʒ]

wreath [ri:θ]

violent [ˈvaɪələnt]

unconvincingly [ˌʌnkənˈvɪnsɪŋlɪ]

overweight [ˈəʊvərˌweɪt]

bureau [ˈbjʊrəʊ]

frivolous [ˈfrɪvələs]

interior [ɪnˈtɪrɪər]

haughtily [ˈhɔːtɪlɪ]

3. Fill in the blanks with the following adverbs and translate.

Pointlessly, haughtily, endlessly, admiringly, ambiguously, unconvincingly, accusingly, sensuously, intently, imperatively.

1. But above the gray land and the spasms of cheerless dust which move … over it, you notice, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.

2. “I can’t complain,” answered Wilson … .

3. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly fat, but she carried her overweight body … as some women can.

4. “I want to see you,” said Tom … .

5. “That dog?” He looked at it … .

6. Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and other things she bought, and went … in.

7. Mr. McKee viewed her … with his head on one side.

8. “Well, I married him,” said Myrtle, … .

9. She looked at me and laughed … .

10. She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me … .

4. Fill in the blanks with prepositions.

1. His acquaintances were shocked by the fact that he turned … in popular restaurants with her.

2. His voice faded … and Tom looked impatiently … the garage.

3. We backed … to a gray old man who was selling very recent puppies of a doubtful breed.