《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter I》第13节
Her host looked at her incredulously. “You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.” I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. “You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.” “I don’t know a single—” “You must know Gatsby.” “Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?” Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square. Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
注释摘要
这一节是尼克第一次见到乔丹·贝克，也是布坎南家晚宴从私下闲谈转向正式晚餐的过渡时分。画面从汤姆一句咄咄逼人的质问开始。贝克小姐刚说过她“绝对在训练”，汤姆的反应极尽讽刺之能事——“You are!”这句话口气是难以置信的，而紧接着他喝下那杯酒的动作，被尼克写作 “as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass”，…