Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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Beauty: (Her lips scarcely stirring, her eyes turned, as always, inward upon herself) Whither shall I journey now?

The Voice: To a new country—a land you have never seen before.

Beauty: (Petulantly) I loathe breaking into these new civilizations. How long a stay this time?

The Voice: Fifteen years.

Beauty: And what’s the name of the place?

The Voice: It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth—a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men—

Beauty: (In astonishment) What?

The Voice: (Very much depressed) Yes, it is truly a melancholy spectacle. Women with receding chins and shapeless noses go about in broad daylight saying “Do this!” and “Do that!” and all the men, even those of great wealth, obey implicitly their women to whom they refer sonorously either as “Mrs. So-and-so” or as “the wife.”

Beauty: But this can’t be true! I can understand, of course, their obedience to women of charm—but to fat women? to bony women? to women with scrawny cheeks?