Сборник лучших произведений американской классической литературы. Уровень 4

“They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.”

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly. I began to walk about the room, examining various objects. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.

“Who's this?”

“That's Mr. Dan Cody[46 - Dan Cody – Дэн Коди], old sport. He's dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.

”

There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume – taken apparently when he was about eighteen.

“I adore it!” exclaimed Daisy.

After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the hydroplane and the midsummer flowers – but outside Gatsby's window it began to rain again so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.

Almost five years! His hand took hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion.

They had forgotten me, Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and went out of the room, leaving them there together.

Chapter 6

James Gatz[47 - James Gatz – Джеймс Гетц] – that was his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment – when he saw Dan Cody's yacht. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

His parents were unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. So he invented Jay Gatsby, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

Dan Cody was fifty years old then, he was a millionaire, and an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. To the young Gatz the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world.

Cody asked him a few questions and found that he was clever, and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white trousers and a yachting cap.

He was employed as a steward, skipper, and secretary. The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. In Boston Dan Cody died.

He told me all this very much later.

For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone.