Читать книгу Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby онлайн

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Every Friday five boxes of oranges and lemons arrived from New York. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour.

By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived – oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. Floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

Now the orchestra is playing cocktail music. Laughter is easier, the groups change more swiftly.

When 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 which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur in a uniform gave me a formal note from his employer – the honor would be entirely Jay Gatsby's, it said, if I would attend his “little party” that night.