Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby (на русском и английском языках)

“Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”

“Come on,” she urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. They say she is very beautiful.”

“Well, I’d like to, but…”

We went on. At 158

Street the cab stopped. Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went in.

The apartment was on the top floor-a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway.

Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon. 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 at the drug store on the corner.

Then some people came- Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, Mr. McKee, a pale feminine man from the flat below, and his wife.

Catherine was a slender girl of about thirty with red hair. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking of innumerable pottery bracelets upon her arms. She came in and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room.

He informed me that he belonged to the “world of art” and I learned later that he was a photographer. 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 and her personality had also changed. Her intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter and her gestures became different.

“My dear,” she told her sister, “most of these people will cheat you every time. All they think of is money.”

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

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment.

“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I 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,” pursued Mrs. McKee.