Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby

�Oh, no,’ said the first girl, �it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.’ As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. �You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.’

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The first supper – there would be another one after midnight – was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent undergraduate given to violent innuendo, and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser degree.

Instead of rambling, this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the countryside – East Egg condescending to West Egg and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gaiety.

�Let’s get out,’ whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and inappropriate half-hour; �this is much too polite for me.’

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy.

The undergraduate nodded in a cynical, melancholy way.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the veranda. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic[46 - Gothic – стиль, доминирующий в архитектуре, живописи и скульптуре в Западной и Центральной Европе с XII до конца XVI в.

] library, paneled with carved English Oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

�What do you think?’ he demanded impetuously.