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

’

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing.

Chapter VIII

I couldn’t sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams. Toward dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby’s drive, and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress – I felt that I had something to tell him, something to warn him about, and morning would be too late.

Crossing his lawn, I saw that his front door was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.

�Nothing happened,’ he said wanly. �I waited, and about four o’clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light.’

His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes.

We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches – once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and the rooms were musty, as though they hadn’t been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table, with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness.

�You ought to go away,’ I said. �It’s pretty certain they’ll trace your car.’

�Go away now, old sport?’

�Go to Atlantic City[92 - Atlantic City – a resort city on the Atlantic coast in southeastern New Jersey] for a week, or up to Montreal[93 - Montreal – a city in southeastern Canada, the capital of Quebec province].’

He wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do.

He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn’t bear to shake him free.

It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody – told it to me because �Jay Gatsby’ had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy.

She was the first �nice’ girl he had ever known.