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10. She pointed suddenly at me, and everyone looked at me … .
4. Fill in the blanks with prepositions.
1. His acquaintances were shocked by the fact that he turned … in popular restaurants with her.
2. His voice faded … and Tom looked impatiently … the garage.
3. We backed … to a gray old man who was selling very recent puppies of a doubtful breed.
4. The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it, so that to move about was to stumble continually … .
5. “I just put it … sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”
6. You have to keep … them all the time.
7. “They’re going West to live for a while until it blows … .”
8. “I almost married a little kike who’d been … me for years.”
9. He had on a dress suit and leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes … him.
10. Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring … the morning Tribune.
5. Find in the text the sentences in which the following word combinations are used. Make up your own sentences using them.
To fatten the practice, to sink down, to force somebody, a persistent stare, to slap somebody, a thickish figure, to block out, an immediate vitality, to wet somebody’s lips, a coarse voice, to exchange a frown, discreetly, shrill and languid, the influence of something, a mincing shout, to view somebody intently, to turn somebody’s attention to something, elaborateness, an artificial laughter, passionate voices.
6. Find in the text the English equivalents of the following words and word combinations. Make up your own sentences using them.
Пепел, бесконечно, несуществующий, разводной мост, любовница, любовная связь, знакомые, настаивать, жаловаться, широкие бедра, торопливо, забраться, сомнительная порода, уважительный, впечатляющее высокомерие, отклонить, отчаяние, развод, отвести глаза, завивка, ошейник, скулить, спотыкаться.
7. Put the verbs in brackets into Past Perfect and explain why it is used.
1. She … (change) her dress to a brown figured muslin.
2. When I came back they … (disappear).
3. She … (pluck) her eyebrows and then drew them again.
4. He … just … (shave), for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone.
5. She told me with pride that her husband … (photograph) her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.
6. Mrs. Wilson … (change) her costume some time before.
7. The intense vitality that … (be) so remarkable in the garage turned into impressive arrogance.
8. It came from Myrtle, who … (overhear) the question, and it was violent and rude.
9. I tried to show by my expression that I … (play) no part in her past.
10. When he … (go) halfway he turned around.
8. Who said the following words? Under what circumstances?
1. “Works pretty slow, don’t he?”
2. “I want to get one of those dogs for the apartment.”
3. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. People who ought to know say she’s very beautiful.”
4. “If Chester could make a photo of you in that pose I think the result would be something special.”
5. “Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”
6. “I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.”
7. “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”
8. “I almost married a little kike who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. But if I hadn’t met Chester, he could be my husband now.”
9. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”
10. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai —”
9. Answer the following questions.
1. Where was the valley of ashes? What was special about it? Why did passengers have to stare at it for half an hour?
2. Did Nick want to see Tom’s mistress? Who forced him to? Where did she live?
3. What can you say about Mr. Wilson? Was he a strong successful man?
4. What did Mrs. Wilson buy after coming to New York?
5. Describe Mrs. Wilson’s apartment. Did Myrtle have good taste? Prove it.
6. Whom did Myrtle invite to the party? Tell some words about every guest.
7. How did Mrs. Wilson react to all compliments? Had her behavior changed since the garage?
8. What did Catherine say about the relationships in the Wilson and Buchanan families? Did Myrtle love her husband? Why, in Catherine’s opinion, couldn’t Tom get a divorce? Was it true?
9. How did Tom and Myrtle get acquainted?
10. What happened in the end of the evening? Who did Nick leave with? Where did they go?
10. Tell about the party from the person of:
a) Myrtle Wilson;
b) Catherine;
c) Mr. McKee.
Chapter III
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I looked at his guests who were diving from the tower of his raft, or sunbathing on the hot sand of his beach. Some guests used to take his two motor-boats, drawing aquaplanes[59 - aquaplane – акваплан —спортивный плотик,служащий для передвижения спортсмена по воде на буксире за самоходными судами] over the foamy waters. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became a bus, transporting parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, worked hard all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and secateurs, repairing the damage of the night before.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York – every Monday these same oranges and lemons were left in a pyramid of peels at his back door. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.
At least once a fortnight a lot of providers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. Spiced baked hams, salads of multicolored designs, pastry pigs and dark gold turkeys were crowded on buffet tables. In the main hall there was a bar full of gins and liquors.
By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived – a great number of musicians with their trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and flutes, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked in five lines in the driveway, and already the halls and salons and verandas are colorful with bright clothes and hair cut in strange new ways. The bar is in full use, and floating rounds of cocktails go throughout the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and introductions forgotten immediately, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.
The lights grow brighter as the earth turns away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing cocktail music, and the opera of voices sounds louder. Laughter is easier minute by minute, caused by any cheerful word. The groups change more quickly, grow with new arrivals, disappear and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who turn up here and there among the more solid ladies, become the center of a group for a moment, and then, excited with triumph, walk on through the sea of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of these girls takes a cocktail out of the air, drinks it for courage and dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary silence; the orchestra leader changes his rhythm specially for her. The party has begun.
I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests whom he had actually invited. People were not invited – they went there. They got into automobiles which brought them to Gatsby’s door. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission[60 - with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission – с простодушной непосредственностью, которая сама по себе служила входным билетом].
Gatsby had actually invited me by a surprisingly formal note. It said it would be the honor, if I attended his “little party” that night. He had seen me several times, and had intended to visit me long before, but circumstances had prevented it – signed Jay Gatsby.
Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around feeling uncomfortable among the people I didn’t know – though here and there was a face I had noticed on the train. As soon as I arrived I made a try to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked about him stared at me in such a surprise, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table – the only place in the garden where a single man could stand without looking alone.
I was on my way to get drunk from simple embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.
Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.[61 - Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by. – Рада она была или нет, но я почувствовал необходимость ухватиться за кого-нибудь, пока я еще не начал приставать с душевными разговорами к прохожим.]
“Hello!” I cried, going toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.
“I thought you might be here,” she answered absently as I came up. “I remembered you lived next door to —”
She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute, and listened to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who stopped at the foot of the steps.
“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t win.” That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before. The girls moved on. With Jordan’s golden arm resting in mine, we descended the steps. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble[62 - each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble – каждый из которых был нам представлен как Мистер Мамбл (mumble – невнятное бормотание)].
“Do you come to these parties often?” asked Jordan the girl beside her.
“The last one was a month ago when I met you here,” answered the girl, in a confident voice. She turned to her companion: “Wasn’t it for you, Lucille?”
It was for Lucille, too.
“I like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my dress on a chair, and he asked me my name and address – in half a week I got a package from Croirier’s[63 - Croirier’s – дом моды Круарье – вымысел автора. Слово образовано от французского глагола croire – верить] with a new evening dress in it.”
“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan.
“Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars.”
“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.”
“Who doesn’t?” I asked.
“Gatsby. Somebody told me —” The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially. “Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”
A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.
“I don’t think it’s so much that,” argued Lucille skeptically; “it’s more that he was a German spy during the war.”
“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany,” one of the men assured us positively.
“Oh, no,” said the first girl. “it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.” As our credulity switched back to her[64 - as our credulity switched back to her – так как она снова завладела нашим вниманием] she leaned forward with enthusiasm. “You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.”
She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby.
The first supper – there would be another one after midnight – was served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party. There were three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent undergraduate who was obviously sure that sooner or later Jordan was going to be with him. This party, unlike the others, tried to stay the noble representatives[65 - noble representatives – благородные представители] of the East Egg and resisted the gaiety of Gatsby’s guests.
“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful and boring half an hour; “this is much too polite for me.”
We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The bar was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the veranda. On a chance we walked into a high Gothic library, paneled with carved English oak.
A middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed glasses, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, looking at the shelves of books. As we entered he turned around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
“What do you think about that?” he waved his hand toward the book-shelves. “As a matter of fact they’re real. I’ve checked.”
“The books?”
He nodded.
“Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they would be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real! Let me show you,” he rushed to the bookcases and returned with a book. “See!” he cried triumphantly. “It fooled me. It’s a triumph. What realism! What do you expect?”
He snatched the book from me and replaced it quickly on its shelf.
“Who brought you?” he asked. “Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.”
Jordan looked at him cheerfully, without answering.
“I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” he continued. “Mrs. Claude Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”
“Has it?”
“A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re —”
“You told us.”
We shook hands with him and went back outdoors. There was dancing now in the garden; old men pushing young girls backward in circles, couples holding each other fashionably, and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically. By midnight the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a famous contralto had sung in jazz, and happy bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky. Champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls[66 - finger-bowl – полоскательница для рук – популярный предмет сервировки стола в американских ресторанах вплоть до начала Первой мировой войны, один из признаков элитарности ресторана]. I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a little girl, who gave way to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something important.
At a pause in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.
