Великий Гэтсби / The Great Gatsby

“Doesn't she like Wilson either?”

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had heard my question and it was violent and obscene, “Of course, not.”

“You see?” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce.”

Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at this lie.

“When they get married,” continued Catherine, “they're going West to live for a while there.”

“Why not to Europe?”

“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”

“Really?”

“Just last year. I went over there with a girl friend.”

“Stay long?”

“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We had more than twelve hundred dollars when we started but we lost everything. God, how I hated that town!”

“I almost made a mistake, too,” Mrs. McKee declared vigorously. “I almost married a man who was below me. Everybody was saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's below you!' But luckily I met Chester!”

“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn't marry him.”

“I know I didn't.”

“And I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that's the difference between your case and mine.”

“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”

“I made a mistake,” she declared vigorously. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe.”

“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.

“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”

She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me. I tried to smile.

“I was crazy only when I married him. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came to take it back when he was out.”

She looked around to see who was listening: “'Oh, is that your suit?' I said. But I gave it to him and then I lay down and was crying all afternoon.”

“She really must divorce,” resumed Catherine to me. “They've been living over that garage for eleven years.”

The bottle of whiskey – a second one – appeared. I wanted to get out and walk away but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild argument.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly told me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

“We were sitting on the train, facing each other. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. Tom had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him. When we came into the station he was next to me – and so I told him I'd call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited when I got into a taxi with him. My only thought was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.'“

She turned to Mrs. McKee and gave an artificial laughter.

“My dear,” she cried, “I'm going to give you this dress one day. I'll buy another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I have to do. A massage, and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ash-trays, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave.”

It was ten o'clock. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other. At midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai…”

Making a short movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices. Mr. McKee awoke from his sleep and went toward the door. I took my hat and followed him.

“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“All right,” I agreed, “I'll be glad to.”

Then I was lying half asleep on the bench at the Pennsylvania Station, and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Chapter 3

There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his gardens men and girls came and went like moths. 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. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city. And on Mondays eight servants toiled all day with mops and brushes and hammers, repairing the ravages of the night before.

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.

Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles.

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.

I noticed Jordan Baker with two girls in yellow dresses.

She 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.

“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

“I thought I would meet you here,” she responded absently. “I remembered you lived next door to…”

“Hello!” the girls in yellow dresses cried together. “Sorry you didn't win.”

They were talking about the golf competition 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.”

“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. She turned to her companion: “You too, Lucille?”

Of course, Lucille, too.

“I like to come here,” 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 – and in some days I got a package with a new evening gown in it.”

“Did you accept it?” asked Jordan.

“Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big for me. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

“He doesn't want any trouble,” said the other girl eagerly, “with anybody.”

“Who doesn't?” I inquired.

“Gatsby. Somebody told me…”

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially.

“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”

“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.

“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, he grew up with him in Germany,” he assured us.

“Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn't be that, because he was in the American army during the war. But just look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man.”

We all turned and looked around for Gatsby.

The first supper – there would be another one after midnight – was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her around a table on the other side of the garden.

“Let's get out,” whispered Jordan, after half an hour.

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host.

The bar, where we went 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. We opened a heavy door, and walked into a library.

A stout, middle-aged man with enormous spectacles was sitting on the edge of a great table, staring at the shelves of books. As we entered he turned 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. They're real.”

“The books?”

He nodded.

“Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they were unreal. But they're absolutely real. Pages and – Here! Let me show you.”

He rushed to the bookcases and returned with a big volume.

“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It's a masterpiece. But he didn't cut the pages. What do you want? What do you expect?”

He took the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf.

“Who brought you?” he demanded. “Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.”

Jordan looked at him cheerfully without answering.

“I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt,” he continued. “Mrs. Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I've been drunk for about a week now, and I decide to sit in a library.”

“And?”

“I can't tell yet. I've only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They're real. They're…”

“You told us.”

We shook hands with him gravely and went back outdoors.

I tried to find the host. I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a girl who was laughing all the time. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two glasses of champagne.

The man looked at me and smiled.

“Your face is familiar,” he said, politely. “Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?”

“Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Battalion.”

“Oh! And I was in the Seventh Battalion. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.”

He told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was going to try it out in the morning.

“Want to go with me, old sport?”

“What time?”

“Any time that suits you best.”

I wanted to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

“Are you having a good time?” she inquired.

“Yes, I am.” I turned again to my new acquaintance. “This is an unusual party for me. I haven't even seen the host. I live over there, and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an invitation.”

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

“I'm Gatsby,” he said suddenly.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

“I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host.”

He smiled. It was one of those rare smiles, that you may come across four or five times in life. Almost at the moment when Mr. Gatsby identified himself a servant hurried toward him with the information that Chicago was calling him on the wire. He excused himself with a small bow.

“If you want anything just ask for it, old sport,” he urged me. “Excuse me. I will rejoin you later.”

When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordan.

“Who is he?” I demanded. “Do you know?”

“He's just a man named Gatsby.”

“Where is he from, I mean? And what does he do?”

“Well, he told me once he was an Oxford man. However, I don't believe it.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know,” she insisted, “I just don't think he went there”.

Something in her tone reminded me of the other girl's “I think he killed a man.”

“Anyhow he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject. “And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy.”

There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader was heard.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried. “At the request of Mr. Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr. Vladimir Tostoff's latest work which attracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall[3] last May. If you read the papers you know there was a big sensation – 'Jazz History of the World.'”

Gatsby was standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another. I could see nothing sinister about him. Maybe he was not drinking at all.

“I beg your pardon.”

Gatsby's servant was standing beside us.

“Miss Baker?” he inquired. “I beg your pardon but Mr. Gatsby would like to speak to you alone.”

“With me?” she exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, madame.”

She got up slowly, and followed the servant toward the house. I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes.

I was alone and it was almost two o'clock. The large room was full of people. One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano and beside her stood a tall, red haired young lady. That lady was singing. She had drunk a quantity of champagne and she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with broken sobs. The tears coursed down her cheeks. Soon she sank into a chair and went off into a deep sleep.

“She had a fight with a man who says he's her husband,” explained a girl who was standing nearby.

I looked around. The hall was at present occupied by two men and their wives. The wives were talking to each other, “Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home. We're always the first ones to leave.”

“So are we.”

“Well, we're almost the last tonight,” said one of the men. “The orchestra left half an hour ago.”

The door of the library opened and Jordan Baker and Gatsby came out together.

“I've just heard the most amazing story,” Jordan whispered to me. “How long were we in there?”

“Why – about an hour.”

“It was simply amazing,” she repeated. “But I swore I wouldn't tell it anybody.”

She yawned gracefully in my face. “Please come and see me… Phone book… Under the name of Mrs. Sigourney Howard… My aunt…”

I joined the last of Gatsby's guests who gathered around him. I wanted to apologize: I had not known him in the garden.

“Don't mention it, old sport,” he said. “And don't forget we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock.”

The servant behind his shoulder said:

“Philadelphia wants you on the phone, sir.”

“All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there… good night.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.” He smiled. “Good night, old sport… Good night.”

As I walked down the steps I saw that the party was not over. In the ditch beside the road rested a new automobile which had left Gatsby's drive two minutes before. A dozen curious chauffeurs left their automobiles blocking the road and were watching the scene.

A man in a long coat had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in the middle of the road, looking from the automobile to the observers and from the observers to the automobile.

“See!” he explained. “It went in the ditch.”

I recognized the man – I met him in the Gatsby's library.

“How did it happen?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I know nothing whatever about mechanics,” he said decisively.

“But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?”

“Don't ask me,” said he. “I know very little about driving – next to nothing. It happened, and that's all I know.”

“Well, if you're a poor driver why did you drive at night?”

“But I wasn't driving,” he explained, “I wasn't even trying.”

“Do you want to commit suicide?”

“You don't understand,” explained he. “I wasn't driving. There's another man in the automobile.”

The door of the automobile slowly opened. The crowd – it was now a crowd – stepped back and when the door had opened wide there was a pause. Then, very gradually, part by part, a man appeared.

“What's the matter?” he inquired calmly.

“Look!”

Half a dozen fingers pointed at the wheel.

“It came off,” someone explained.

He nodded.

“At first I didn't notice we had stopped.”

A pause. Then he remarked in a determined voice:

“Could you tell me where is a gas station?”

At least a dozen men explained to him that wheel and automobile were no longer joined.

“We will drive slowly,” he said.

“But the WHEEL'S off!”

He hesitated.

“We will try,” he said.

I turned away and went toward home. I glanced back once. A moon was shining over Gatsby's house.

I began to like New York. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and watch romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives. For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again. I liked to walk with her because she was a golf champion and every one knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of curiosity.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever men. She was incurably dishonest. But dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

Chapter 4

On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore everybody returned to Gatsby's house.

“He's a bootlegger[4],” said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. “One time he killed a man who had found out that he was second cousin to the devil. Give me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that crystal glass.”

Once I wrote down the names of those who came to Gatsby's house that summer. I can still read the names and they will give you a good impression of those who accepted Gatsby's hospitality.

From East Egg came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a corner. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr. Chrystie's wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair turned white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.

Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once and had a fight with a man named Etty in the garden. From farther side of the Island came the Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he went to the jail, he was lying drunk on the gravel drive, and Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and Beluga's daughters.

From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick the state senator and Newton Orchid, who controlled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartze (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the movies. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G. Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly-they came to gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he lost.

A man named Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he became known as “the boarder” – I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people there were Gus Waize and Horace O'Donavan and Lester Meyer and George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.

Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. Every time they were different, but they were very identical one with another. I have forgotten their names – Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria or Judy or June, and their last names were the melodious names of flowers and months.

In addition to all these I can remember Faustina O'Brien and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with her chauffeur, and a prince of something, whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.

All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer.

* * *

At nine o'clock, one morning late in July Gatsby's gorgeous automobile lurched up the rocky drive to my door. It was the first time he had called on me though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach.

“Good morning, old sport. You're having lunch with me today and I thought we'd ride up together.”

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his automobile. He was never quite still. He saw me looking with admiration at his automobile.

“It's pretty, isn't it, old sport?” He jumped off to give me a better view. “Haven't you ever seen it before?”

I'd seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel. We sat down behind many layers of glass and started to town.

I had talked with him some times in the past month and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So he had become simply the proprietor of a wonderful restaurant next door.

And then came that silly ride. Gatsby was leaving his elegant sentences unfinished.

“Look here, old sport,” he said surprisingly. “What's your opinion of me, anyhow?”

“Hm, I don't know much…” I began.

“Well, I'm going to tell you something about my life,” he interrupted. “I don't want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear. I'll tell you the truth. I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle-West – all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.”

“What part of the Middle-West?” I inquired.

“San Francisco.”

“I see.”

“My family all died and I came into a good deal of money.”

His voice was solemn.

“After that I lived like a young prince in all the capitals of Europe – Paris, Venice, Rome – collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago. Then came the war, old sport. I was promoted to be a major. Here's a thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. The man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster.”

It was a photograph of young men. There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much, younger – with a cricket bat in his hand.

Then it was all true.

“I'm going to make a big request of you today,” he said, “so I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad thing that happened to me.” He hesitated.

“You'll hear about it this afternoon.”

“At lunch?”

“No, this afternoon. I know that you're taking Miss Baker to tea.”

“Do you mean you're in love with Miss Baker?”

“No, old sport, I'm not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you about this matter.”

I hadn't the faintest idea what “this matter” was, but I was more annoyed than interested. I hadn't asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss Mr. Jay Gatsby.