The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Selected Tales of the Jazz Age Сollection. Адаптированная книга для чтения на английском языке. Уровень B1. Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд

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СКАЧАТЬ as a youth of eighteen. The college was in a fever of excitement. Men ran out of classes, the football team left its match and ran shouting after the crowd. Their remarks were insulting the tender feelings of Benjamin Button.

      «He ought to go to prep school[25] at his age!»

      «Look at the infant prodigy[26]!»

      «He thought this was the aged men's home».

      «Go up to Harvard[27]!»

      Benjamin walked faster, and soon he was running. He would show them! He would go to Harvard, and then they would regret these insulting remarks!

      When he finally got on the train for Baltimore and felt safe, he put his head from the window. «You'll regret this!» he shouted.

      «Ha-ha!» the undergraduates laughed. «Ha-ha-ha!»

      It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made…

      Chapter 5

      In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he marked his birthday by going to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It the same year he began «going out socially» – that is, his father insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more friendly companions – in fact, since Benjamin had stopped dyeing his hair (which was still grayish) they seemed about the same age and could be taken for brothers.

      One night in August they got into the carriage in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at their neighbor country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a wonderful evening. A full moon lighted the road with the silver color, and late-blooming flowers filled the air with smells that were like low, half-heard laughter. It was almost impossible not to be impressed by the beauty of the sky – almost.

      «There's a great future in the hardware business», Roger Button was saying. He was not a romantic man – his sense of beauty was limited.

      «Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks», he added. «You, young men, with energy and enthusiasm have the great future before you».

      Far up the road they saw the lights of the country house, and then a sound reached them – the music of violins or the whisper of the silver moon.

      They stopped behind a handsome carriage whose passengers were getting out at the door. A lady, then an elderly gentleman, then another young beautiful lady. Benjamin trembled; an almost chemical reaction seemed to change all the elements of his body. A fever passed over him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a painful noise in his ears. It was first love.

      The girl was slender and tender, her hair was dark under the moon and honey-colored under the gas-lamps of the doorway.

      Roger Button leaned over to his son. «That», he said, «is young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief».

      Benjamin nodded coldly. «Pretty little thing», he said. But when the negro boy had taken their carriage away, he added: «Dad, can you introduce me to her?»

      They approached a group, where Miss Moncrief was the centre. She made a low curtsy before Benjamin in the old tradition manner. Yes, he might have a dance. He thanked her and walked away – staggered away.

      The time for his turn seemed endless. He stood close to the wall, silent, mysterious, watching with jealous eyes the young men of Baltimore as they moved around Hildegarde Moncrief, with passionate admiration in their faces. How disgusting they seemed to Benjamin; how young and rosy! Their brown hair made him feel sick.

      But when his own time came, and he moved with her in a dance to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his jealousy and worry melted from him like snow. Blind with delight, he felt that life was just beginning.

      «You and your brother got here just as we did, didn't you?» asked Hildegarde, looking up at him with eyes that were like bright blue enamel.

      Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's brother, would it be best to tell her the truth? He remembered his experience at Yale, so he decided against it. It would be rude to argue with a lady; it would be criminal to ruin this wonderful moment with the grotesque story of his birth. Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.

      «I like men of your age», Hildegarde told him. «Young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to understand women».

      Benjamin felt he was about to propose to her immediately – with an effort he resisted the desire.

      «You're just the romantic age», she continued. «Fifty. Twenty-five pretends to be wise and experienced; thirty is pale from overwork; forty is the age of long and dull stories; sixty is – oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the proper age. I love fifty».

      Fifty seemed to Benjamin a wonderful age. He wished passionately to be fifty.

      «I've always said», went on Hildegarde, «that I'd rather marry[28] a man of fifty who would take care of me than marry a man of thirty and take care of him».

      For Benjamin the rest of the evening was in a honey-colored dream. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered that they had the same attitudes to all the questions of the day. She agreed to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then they would discuss all these questions further.

      On his way home in the carriage just before the dawn, Benjamin suddenly heard that his father was discussing wholesale hardware.

      «… And what do you think should draw our biggest attention after hammers and nails?» the elder Button was saying.

      «Love», replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.

      «Lugs?» exclaimed Roger Button, «Why, I've just covered the question of lugs».

      Benjamin looked at him with astonished eyes just as sunlight burst into the eastern sky suddenly, and a bird sang loudly in the tree…

      Chapter 6

      When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say «made known», because General Moncrief declared that he would rather fall upon his sword than[29] announce it), the fever of excitement in Baltimore society reached its peak. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin's birth was remembered and spread out upon the winds of scandal in incredible forms as an adventure novel. It was said that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button; that he was his brother who had spent forty years in prison; that he was John Wilkes Booth[30] in disguise – and, finally, that he had two small conical horns hidden on his head.

      The Sunday New York newspapers presented the case with fascinating pictures which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish, or to a snake. He became known, among journalists, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as it usually happens, was known only to a few people.

      However, every one agreed with General Moncrief that it was «criminal» for a lovely girl who could marry any handsome young man СКАЧАТЬ