«Великий Гэтсби» и другие лучшие произведения Ф.С. Фицджеральда

�How you ever get anything done is beyond me.’

I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she �got done’. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

�You live in West Egg,’ she remarked contemptuously.

�I don’t know a single —’

�You must know Gatsby.’

�Gatsby?’ demanded Daisy. �What Gatsby?’

Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

�Why candles?’ objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. �In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.’ She looked at us all radiantly. �Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.’

�We ought to plan something,’ yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

�All right,’ said Daisy. �What’ll we plan?’ She turned to me helplessly: �What do people plan?’

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

�Look!’ she complained; �I hurt it.’

We all looked – the knuckle was black and blue.

�You did it, Tom,’ she said accusingly. �I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it.

�I hate that word hulking,’ objected Tom crossly, �even in kidding.’

�Hulking,’ insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.