【有声英语文学名著】了不起的盖茨比 第3章（1）

 The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 3 - Part 1
 
  There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths 1 among the whisperings and the champagne 2 and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit 3 the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts 4 of foam 5. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon 6 scampered 7 like a brisk yellow bug 8 to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled 9 all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages 10 of the night before.
Every Friday five crates 11 of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. 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 corps 12 of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet 13 tables, garnished 14 with glistening 15 hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry 16 pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass 17 rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing 18 up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons 19 and verandas 21 are gaudy 22 with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails 24 permeate 25 the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter 26 and laughter, and casual innuendo 27 and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail 23 music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality 28, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell 29 with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter 31 and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous 32 moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide 33 on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary 34 hush 35; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the FOLLIES 36. The party has begun.
I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles 37 which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity 38 of heart that was its own ticket of admission.
I had been actually invited. A chauffeur 39 in a uniform of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer: the honor would be entirely 40 Gatsby’s, it said, if I would attend his “little party.” that night. He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar 41 combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic 42 hand.
Dressed up in white flannels 43 I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls 44 and eddies 45 of people I didn’t know—though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting 46 train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.
As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently 47 any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.
I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment 48 when Jordan Baker 49 came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.
Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to some one before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.
“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally 50 loud across the garden.
“I thought you might be here,” she responded absently as I came up. “I remembered you lived next door to——” She held my hand impersonally 51, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute, and gave ear 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.
“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the girls in yellow, “but we met you here about a month ago.”
“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” remarked Jordan, and I started, but the girls had moved casually 52 on and her remark was addressed to the premature 53 moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine, we descended 54 the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight 55, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble 56.
“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.
“The last one was the one I met you at,” answered the girl, in an alert 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 gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.”
“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan.
“Sure I did. I was going to wear it to-night, but it was too big in the bust 57 and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads 58. 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 inquired.
“Gatsby. Somebody told me——”
The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially 59.
“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”
A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles 60 bent 61 forward and listened eagerly.
“I don’t think it’s so much THAT,” argued Lucille sceptically; “it’s more that he was a German spy during the war.”
One of the men nodded in confirmation 62.
“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany,” he assured us positively 63.
“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 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. It was testimony 64 to the romantic speculation 65 he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.
The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent 66 undergraduate given to violent innuendo, and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser 67 degree. Instead of rambling 68, this party had preserved a dignified 69 homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the country-side—East Egg condescending 70 to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.
“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful 71 and inappropriate half-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 undergraduate nodded in a cynical 72, melancholy 73 way.
The bar, where we glanced first, 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 20. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.
A stout 30, middle-aged 74 man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.
“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.
“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.
“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain 75. I ascertained 76. They’re real.”