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

�I got dressed before luncheon,’ said the child, turning eagerly to Daisy.

�That’s because your mother wanted to show you off.’ Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck. �You dream, you. You absolute little dream.’

�Yes,’ admitted the child calmly. �Aunt Jordan’s got on a white dress too.’

�How do you like mother’s friends?’ Daisy turned her around so that she faced Gatsby. �Do you think they’re pretty?’

�Where’s Daddy?’

�She doesn’t look like her father,’ explained Daisy.

�She looks like me. She’s got my hair and shape of the face.’

Daisy sat back upon the couch. The nurse took a step forward and held out her hand.

�Come, Pammy.’

�Good-bye, sweetheart!’

With a reluctant backward glance the well-disciplined child held to her nurse’s hand and was pulled out the door, just as Tom came back, preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice. Gatsby took up his drink.

�They certainly look cool,’ he said, with visible tension.

We drank in long, greedy swallows.

�I read somewhere that the sun’s getting hotter every year,’ said Tom genially. �It seems that pretty soon the earth’s going to fall into the sun – or wait a minute – it’s just the opposite – the sun’s getting colder every year.’

�Come outside,’ he suggested to Gatsby, �I’d like you to have a look at the place.’

I went with them out to the veranda.

On the green Sound, stagnant in the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. Gatsby’s eyes followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.

�I’m right across from you.’

�So you are.’

Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days alongshore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved against the blue cool limit of the sky. Ahead lay the scalloped ocean and the abounding blessed isles.

�There’s sport for you,’ said Tom, nodding. �I’d like to be out there with him for about an hour.’

We had luncheon in the dining-room, darkened too against the heat, and drank down nervous gaiety with the cold ale.

�What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ cried Daisy, �and the day after that, and the next thirty years?’

�Don’t be morbid,’ Jordan said. �Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.