Then wear a golden hat, If it can touch her heart; if you can jump high, Just dance for her too, Jump till she cries: "Lover, lover with gold hat, jumping high, I must have you! " Thomas Parker Danvilliers ①This is a character in the author's first novel "Paradise on Earth". When I was young and inexperienced, my father taught me a word, which I still can't forget. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that not everyone in this world has had the same advantages that you have." He didn't say anything else.However, although we don't talk much between father and son, we have always been very open, so I understand that his words have a lot of meaning.Over time I have been in the habit of withholding judgment from all men, and this habit has made many eccentrics open to me, and has made me the victim of not a few chattering bores.When this feature appears in normal people, people with abnormal psychology will soon notice it and hold on to it.For this reason, I was unjustly accused of being a petty politician when I was in college, because I got to know the secret sad stories of dissolute and unknown people.Most of the privacy I don't ask for--whenever I see by some unmistakable sign that another confession is about to burst on the horizon, I tend to pretend to be asleep, absent-minded, or A frivolous attitude with malicious intent.For the heartfelt sentiments that young people pour out, or at least the language in which they express them, are often plagiarized, and much of it manifestly concealed.To reserve judgment is to express unlimited hope.I still fear to miss something if I forget (as my father condescendingly suggested, and I repeat with condescension) that fundamental moral values ​​are not evenly distributed at birth.

After boasting like this of my tolerance, I have to admit that it has a limit.Human action may be founded on solid rock or on wet swamps, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on.When I came back from the East last fall, I felt like I wanted people all over the world to wear uniform and always be morally at attention.I no longer want to take part in the wild pleasures, nor the pleasure of occasionally peeking into the depths of the human heart.With the exception of Gatsby - the man who gave the book its name - who does not belong to this reaction of mine - Gatsby, who stands for everything I really despise.If character is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there is something magnificent about this man, a heightened sensitivity to life's promises, like one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. .This sensitivity has nothing to do with the limp susceptibility usually euphemistically called "creative temperament"--it is an uncommon gift for hope, a romantic quickness, which is what I have learned in my life. What I have never found in other people is also what I am unlikely to find again in the future.No--Gatsby himself was justifiable in the end, and it was the things that devoured Gatsby's mind that followed his reverie after the passing of his dreams foul dust.

For three generations my family has been the leading and well-to-do family in this Midwestern city.Calloway can be considered a family. According to family legend, we are descended from the Duke of Buccleoch, but the actual founder of our family is my grandfather's brother.He came here in 1851, bought a double to fight in the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father still runs today. ① Scottish nobility. I never met this great-uncle, but I am said to look like him, especially as evidenced by the portrait of the iron face that hangs in my father's office.I graduated from New Haven in 1915, exactly a quarter of a century after my father, and not long after that I took part in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the World War. I felt a lot of fun during the trip, and felt bored when I came back.The Midwest was no longer the warm center of the world, but the wild fringes of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business.Everybody I know is in the bond business, so I don't think it should have any problem supporting an extra bachelor.My uncles and aunts talked it over, they were shocked to choose a preparatory school for me②, and finally said: "Well... then... let's do it." The faces were all serious and hesitant.Father promised to finance my expenses for a year, and then, after several delays, I went East in the spring of 1922, thinking I was gone forever. ①The seat of Yale University. ②Private boarding schools for children from rich families.

The practical solution was to find a boarding house in the city, but it was the warm season and I had just left a place with wide lawns and pleasant trees, so a young man at the office suggested that we both When I rented a house together in the suburbs, I thought it was a great idea.He found the house, a weather-stripped plank bungalow for eighty dollars a month, but at the last minute the company moved him to Washington, and I had to move out to the country by myself.I have a dog - at least I had him for a few days before he ran away - an old Dodge and a Finnish maid who makes my bed and cooks my breakfast and cooks on the electric stove while she mutters Muttering Finnish proverbs.

I felt alone for the first few days, until someone, even more new than me, stopped me on the road one morning. "How do I get to West Egg?" he asked me resignedly. I told him.As I move on, I don't feel alone anymore.I became a leader, a pioneer, a primitive immigrant.He inadvertently granted honorary citizenship of my part of the world. Seeing the sun shine brightly and the trees suddenly cover with leaves, like something grows so fast in a movie, I had that familiar belief that life began all over again with the onset of summer. There is so much to read, that is one thing, and so much nourishment to draw from the clean, pleasant air.I bought a dozen books on banking, credit, and investment securities, and the books in red gilt covers stood on the shelves like fresh coins from the mint, ready to reveal Midas, Morgan, and M. The secret of Senus ③.Besides that, I have ambitions to read many other books.I was a bit of a geek in college -- I wrote a string of prim and bland editorials for the Yale News one year -- and now I'm ready to incorporate stuff like that back into my life and become a "generalist" again , that is, the most superficial kind of expert.This isn't just a witty epigram -- it's far more successful to just look at life through a window. ① Midas (Midas), the king in Greek mythology, once asked God to grant the alchemy. ② Morgan (Morgan), the American chaebol. ③ Maecenas (maecenas), the rich man of ancient Rome.

By sheer chance, I have rented a house in one of the most surreal villages and towns in North America.The village is on that slender odd-shaped island due east of New York City--where, among other natural wonders, there are two places of unusual shape.Twenty miles from the city, a pair of enormous egg-like peninsulas, identical in shape and separated by a small bay, jut out into the most tranquil stretch of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet yard of Long Island Sound.They're not perfect ovals—like the eggs in the Columbus story, they're all crushed at the end they touch—but their physical resemblance must be a source of wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. .An even more interesting phenomenon for wingless humans is that the two places are distinct in every respect except shape and size.

I live in West Egg, which is the less fashionable of the two places, but that's a very superficial label that doesn't do justice to the quaint and inauspicious contrast between the two.My house was at the very top of the egg, only fifty yards from the bay, squeezed between two large villas that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season.The one on my right is, by any standard, a monstrous thing--it's a replica of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a new tower on one side, sparsely covered with ivy, and A marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawns and gardens.This is Gatsby's mansion.Or rather it was the mansion of a rich man named Gatsby, for I did not know Gatsby.My own house is really ugly, but fortunately small and unnoticed, so I have a view of the sea, a portion of my neighbor's lawn, and the comfort of being next door to a millionaire--all of which Only eighty dollars a month. ①Normandy (Normandy), a region in northern France, has many antique castles.

On the other side of the small bay, the white palace-like mansions in the luxury residential area of ​​East Egg are dazzling along the water. The story of that summer really began on the night when I drove there to eat at Tom Buchanan's house .Daisy is my distant cousin and Tom is something I've known since college.I stayed with them for two days in Chicago just after the war. Her husband, among other things, was once one of the greatest football players New Haven ever played -- a national figure, arguably, the sort of man who at twenty-one is on a limited scale. After reaching the pinnacle of achievement, everything will inevitably taste like going downhill from then on.His family was very rich -- he had been criticized for spending money like that when he was in college, but now he left Chicago and moved East, and the pomp and circumstance of the move was really amazing.For example, he brought a whole herd of polo horses from Lake Forest.It's unbelievable that there are people in my generation rich enough to do this. ① Lake Forest (Lake Forest), a small town in northeastern Illinois.

Why they came east, I don't know.For no particular reason, they stayed in France for a year and then wandered restlessly, wherever polo was played and everyone had money.It's settled this time, Daisy said on the phone.But I don't believe it—I can't read Daisy's mind, but I think Tom will drift forever in a little wistfulness, chasing the dramatic excitement of some unrepeatable ball game. So, on a warm, windy evening, I drove to East Egg to visit two old friends I barely knew.Their house was more luxurious than I had expected, a stark, red and white Georgian mansion facing the bay.The lawn started from the beach and went straight to the gate, a full quarter of a league, across Japanese, brick walks and fiery gardens - and finally ran to the house, as if borrowed from the momentum of running, it simply turned green ivy climbing up the wall.There was a row of French-style French windows on the front of the house, which were now shining golden in the sunset and opened to the warm afternoon breeze.Tom Buchanan stood in riding clothes, legs apart, on the front porch.

He had changed since the New Haven days.He was a man in his thirties now, a stocky man with straw-colored hair, a stern mouth, and a haughty demeanor.Two piercing and haughty eyes had dominated his face, giving an impression of perpetual dominance.Not even his effeminately elegant riding attire could conceal the immense physical power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots, stretching the top straps tight.As his shoulders roll, you can see a large muscle shifting under his thin top.It was a body of incomparable strength, a cruel body. His speaking voice, a thick tenor, added to his impression of a brutish temperament.He also had the same old-fashioned way of talking, even with people he liked, so there were plenty of people he hated when he was in New Haven.

"I say, don't you think I have final say on these matters," he seemed to be saying, "just because I'm stronger and more manly than you." We belonged to the same high school Fraternity, though we weren't close, I always had the feeling that he valued me and, with his characteristic brutish, savage wistfulness, wished I liked him too. We talked for a few minutes on the sunny balcony. "It's a nice place for me," he said, rolling his eyes from side to side. He took me by the arm and turned me around, pointing with a huge hand to the view, which in a wave included a sunken Italian garden, half an acre of dark, rich Roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat bobbing on the shore with the tide "This place used to belong to Des Moines, the oil magnate." He turned me around again, polite but not descriptive, "Let's go inside." We walked down a high corridor into a spacious, bright rose-colored room.There are French windows at both ends, which lightly embed this room in this house.These long windows were all ajar.Against the backdrop of the verdant green grass outside, it looks crystal-clear and dazzling, as if the grass is about to grow indoors.A light wind blew through the room, blowing the curtains in at one end and out the other, like white flags, towards the sugar flower wedding cake decoration on the ceiling; A shadow like the wind blowing the sea. The only thing that was completely still in the room was a huge divan on which two young women seemed to float on a large balloon anchored to the ground.They were both dressed in white, and their dresses were billowing in the wind, as if they had just been blown back from flying around the house in a balloon.I must have stood for a long time, listening to the snapping of the curtains and the creaking of a picture hanging on the wall.Suddenly, with a bang, Tom Buchanan closed the rear French windows, and the remaining wind in the room gradually subsided, and the curtains, the carpet, and the two young women also slowly fell to the ground. I don't know the younger of the two.She lay flat on one end of the couch, her body motionless, her chin tilted up slightly, as if she was balancing something on it and was afraid it would fall.If she saw me out of the corner of her eye, she didn't say anything--in fact, I was taken aback and almost apologized to her for disturbing her by my entry. The other young woman, Daisy, tried to get up--and she leaned forward a little, with a sincere expression on her face--and she gave a little chuckle, a little funny and cute little laugh, and I laughed too, and then He went forward and entered the house. "I was paralyzed with joy... paralyzed." She smiled again, as if she had said something very witty, and then took my hand, looked up at me, and said there was no one in the world she would be happier to see.That's one of her special expressions.She whispered to me that the girl doing the balancing act was named Baker (I've heard people say that Daisy's murmurs were just to get people to lean towards her, it's irrelevant gossip, it doesn't detract from the expression Charm). At any rate, Miss Baker's lips moved a little, she nodded to me almost imperceptibly, and then threw her head back hastily -- the thing on which she was balancing was visibly tilted, which surprised her.The words of apology came to my lips again.This almost complete self-indulgence always left me dumbfounded and filled with admiration. I turned to look at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, agitated voice.It's the kind of sound that draws one's ear, as if every word is a set of notes that will never be replayed.Her face was melancholy and beautiful, with a radiant look on her face, two bright eyes, and a radiant and passionate mouth, but there was an exciting quality in her voice that men who fell for her felt. Unforgettable: a melodious charm, a murmured "listen," an intimation that she had had some pleasure a moment ago and had more pleasure in the next hour. I told her about a day I stopped in Chicago on my way East, and a dozen friends asked me to say hello to her. "Did they miss me?" she exclaimed ecstatically. "The whole city is miserable. All the cars have painted the left rear wheel with black paint as a wreath, and entered the lake in the north of the city ① the wailing was heard all night." ①The area where rich people live in Chicago. "It's beautiful! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow," and then she said irrelevantly, "You should see the baby." "I'd love to see it." "She's asleep. She's three years old. Have you never seen her?" "there has never been." "Then you should look at her. She is..." Tom Buchanan, who had been fidgeting up and down the room, stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. "What business are you doing, Nick?" "I'm in the bond business." "Which company?" I told him. "Never heard of it," he said flatly. This makes me feel bad. "You'll hear it," I replied curtly, "you'll hear it when you've been out east." "Oh, I'm sure I'll stay East, don't worry." He looked first at Daisy and then at me, as if he was wary of something else. "I'd be a fucking fool to live anywhere else." Then Miss Baker said, "Absolutely!" so suddenly that it surprised me--the first thing she said since I entered the room.Evidently her words surprised her as much, for she yawned and then rose to her feet in a series of swift and deft movements. "I'm numb," she complained. "I've been lying on that couch for a long time." "Don't stare at me," retorted Daisy, "I've been trying to get you up to New York all afternoon." "No, thank you," said Miss Baker, to the four cocktails that had just been brought out of the pantry, "I'm just going to be doing my exercise." Her master looked at her in disbelief. "Yes!" He drank his wine as if it were a drop from the bottom of the glass. "I don't see how you can possibly do anything." I looked at Miss Baker and wondered what it was that she "did".I love watching her.She was a slender girl with small breasts, all the more handsome because of the puff of her chest like a young cadet.Her gray sun-squinted eyes looked at me too, and polite, reciprocating curiosity in a pale, lovely, disaffected face.Then I remembered where I had seen her before, or a picture of her. "You live at West Egg!" she said scornfully. "I know a man over there." "I don't recognize anyone..." "You ought to know Gatsby." "Gatsby?" Daisy demanded. "Which Gatsby?" Before I could reply that he was my neighbor, the servant announced that dinner was served.Without saying a word, Tom Buchanan slipped a tense arm under mine and pushed me out of the room, as if he were pushing a chess piece to another square on the board. Slim and lazily, the two girls, with their hands lightly on their waists, stepped out in front of us onto the rose-coloured balcony.The balcony faced the setting sun, and four candles on the dining table flickered in the fading wind. "What are you lighting candles for?" Daisy frowned in displeasure.She snuffed them out with her fingers. "Two weeks to go before the longest day of the year." She beamed at us all. "Are you always waiting for the longest day of the year, but you still miss it? I'm always waiting for the longest day of the year, but you still miss it." "We ought to plan something," said Miss Baker yawning, and sat down at the table as if she were going to bed. "Well," said Daisy, "what are we planning?" She turned her face to me and asked resignedly, "what are people planning?" Before I could answer, she stared at her little finger with a fearful expression. "Look!" she complained, "I bruised it." We all saw it -- a little bit of bruising on our knuckles. "You did it, Tom," she scolded him, "I know you didn't mean it, but you did it. It's my retribution for marrying such a rough man, a big, big, clumsy man..." "I hate the word clumsy," protested Tom angrily, "even in jest." "Clumsy," said Daisy forcefully. Sometimes she and Miss Baker spoke at the same time, unobtrusively, but insignificantly bantering, not quite chattering, as indifferent as their white dresses and their detached eyes without any desire.They're sitting here, socializing with Tom and me, just doing their best to entertain or accept hospitality, politely.They knew that dinner would be over in a while, and the night would be over in a while, so they dismissed it casually.It is very different from the West, where every evening the guests are eagerly pushed from stage to stage to the end, always looking forward to and constantly disappointed, or else disappointed that the end moment has come. Very nervous and scared. "You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I said frankly as I drank my second glass of corked but rather wonderful red wine. "Can't you talk about the crops or something?" I didn't mean anything in particular when I said this, but it was taken unexpectedly. "Civilization is collapsing," cried Tom threateningly. "I've been a very pessimistic person about the world lately. Have you seen Rise of Colored Empires by this guy Goddard?" "Uh, no." I replied, surprised by his tone. "I said, this is a very good book that everyone should read. The gist of the book is that if we're not careful, the white race will... be completely overwhelmed. It's all about It's scientifically proven." "Tom has become very knowledgeable," said Daisy, with an expression of half-deep sorrow. "He reads esoteric books, and there are many esoteric words in them. What is that word, we..." "I say, these books are backed by science," continued Tom, casting an impatient glance at her. "This fellow has the whole thing right. We're the dominant race." , we have a responsibility to be vigilant, otherwise, other races will have everything and "We've got to get them down," whispered Daisy, blinking furiously at the blazing sun. "You should make your home in California..." began Miss Baker, but Tom cut her off with a heavy shift in his chair. "The main point is that we are Nordic Germanic peoples. I am, you are, you are, and..." After a moment's hesitation, he nodded to include Daisy, when she rushed again. I fell asleep blinking. "And we created all the things that add up to make civilization—science, art, and so on. Do you understand?" His single-mindedness looked a little pathetic, as if his pompous attitude, though more prominent than usual, was no longer enough for him.At that moment the telephone rang in the house.The butler left the balcony to meet me, and Daisy took the interruption almost immediately to bring her face closer to mine. "I'm going to tell you a family secret," she whispered excitedly, "about the butler's nose. Would you like to hear the story of the butler's nose?" "That's why I'm here tonight." "He wasn't always a butler, you know. He used to polish silver for a family in New York that had a set of silverware for two hundred people. He wiped it all the time, and then his nose I can't stand it..." "Then it went from bad to worse," Miss Baker remarked. "Yes. It got worse and worse until he had to quit." For a moment the afterglow of the setting sun shone tenderly on her red glowing face, and her voice made me lean forward to listen with bated breath--then the brilliance faded away, and each ray of light reluctantly left. She, like the children from a pleasant street at dusk. The butler came back and murmured something into Tom's ear, and Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and went into the room without a word.As if his absence had animated her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice singing in a melodious tune. "I'm so glad to see you at my table, Nick. You make me think of a—a rose, a real rose. Don't you?" Turning her face to Miss Baker, she demanded Echoing the phrase, "A real rose?" This is nonsense.I have nothing in common with a rose.She spoke in a rambling manner, but with a moving passion, as if her heart, hidden in those panting, stirring words, wanted to tell you something.Then she suddenly threw the napkin on the table, said "I'm sorry" and went inside the house. Miss Baker and I exchanged glances that meant nothing was meant.Just as I was about to speak, she sat up alertly and said "Shhh" in a warning voice.A low, excited conversation could be heard in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward without scruple to listen.The murmured voice approached the level of real hearing a few times, lowered, then increased excitedly, and then completely stopped. "That Mr. Gatsby you mentioned is my neighbor..." I began. "Shut up, I want to hear what's going on." "Is something wrong?" I asked naively. "You don't know?" said Miss Baker, genuinely surprised. "I thought everybody knew." "I don't know." "Why..." she said hesitantly, "Tom has a woman in New York." "There's a woman?" I followed blankly. Miss Baker nodded. "She should at least take care of the general situation and call him during dinner. What do you think?" Hardly had I understood what she meant, when there was a rumbling of dresses and boots, and Tom and Daisy came back to the table. "I can't help it!" cried Daisy with forced joy. She sat down, looked first at Miss Baker and then at me, and went on: "I'll take a look outside, and it's very romantic. There's a bird on the lawn, I think it must be Conrad or White Star." A nightingale coming from a steamship company. It keeps singing..." Her voice was singing, too. "It's very romantic, isn't it, Tom?" Two famous British steamship companies specializing in crossing the Atlantic Business. "It's very romantic," he said, and then he said to me with a sad face, "if it's still light enough after dinner, I'll show you to the stables." The phone rang again inside, and everyone was taken aback.Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom, and the talk of the stables, indeed all talk, fell to naught.Among the surviving impressions of the last five minutes at the dinner table, I remember the candles being lit again for no reason, and at the same time I realized that I wanted to look everyone in the eye, but I wanted to avoid everyone's eyes.I could not guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubted that even Miss Baker, who seemed so cynical, would have been able to ignore the shrill and urgent cries of the fifth guest.To a certain temperament, the situation might be amusing—my own instinct was to call the police immediately. Horse, needless to say, is not mentioned again.Tom and Miss Baker, with a few feet of twilight between them, strolled slowly back to the study, as if walking to a vigil next to a real corpse.Meanwhile, pretending to be interested and somewhat deaf, I followed Daisy through a series of corridors to the front balcony.We sat side by side on a wicker settee in the twilight. Daisy took her face in her hands, as if stroking her lovely face, while she gradually looked out into the velvet twilight.I could see her heart was racing, so I asked a few questions about her little girl that I thought were calming. "We don't know each other well, Nick," she said suddenly, "though we're cousins. You weren't at my wedding." "I haven't come back from the war." "Indeed." She hesitated. "Well, I've had enough of it, Nick, so I've pretty much seen it all." Evidently she had reason to hold this view.I waited to hear, but she didn't go any further, and after a while I stammered back to the subject of her daughter. "I think she will definitely say, and... know how to eat, everything." "Uh, yeah." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick, let me tell you what I said when she was born. Do you want to hear it?" "Want to hear it very much." "You'll see why I look at it that way--everything. She wasn't an hour into the world, and Tom knows where. I woke up from the ether feeling alone, and asked Is the nurse a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl and I turned away and cried. Well I said, I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she's a fool in the future - that's what girls do in this kind of world The best way to go is to be a beautiful little fool." "You know I think everything sucks anyway," she went on confidently, "everyone thinks so—the most advanced ones. And I know. I've been everywhere and I've seen it, and I've done it all." She looked about her with a twinkle in her eyes, and looked about her with such an air of majesty, much like Tom, that she laughed again, full of terrible sarcasm. "Sophisticated...Jesus, I'm sophisticated." As soon as her voice fell and she stopped forcing me to pay attention to her and believe her, I felt that what she just said was not the truth at all.It made me uneasy, as if the whole evening had been a trap to force a corresponding affection on me.I waited, and sure enough after a while she looked at me with a real smirk on her lovely face, as if she had made it clear that she was part of a secret upper class society to which she and Tom belonged . Indoors, the red room was brightly lit.Tom and Miss Baker were sitting at one end of the couch, and she was reading him the Saturday Evening Post in a low, steady voice, with a reassuring tone to the stream of words she uttered.The light shone brightly on his leather boots, but dimly on her yellow hair with autumn leaves. Whenever she turned a page and the thin muscles in her arms trembled, the light flickered on the paper again. We went into the house and she held up a hand for us to be quiet. "To be continued," she read, throwing the magazine on the table, "see the next issue of this issue." She moved her knees, straightened her body, and stood up abruptly. "It's ten o'clock," she said, seeming to see the time on the ceiling, "and it's time for my good boy to go to bed." "Jordan's going to the tournament tomorrow," Daisy explained, "over there in Westchester." "Oh...you're Jordan Baker." I understand now why her face was so familiar--she had gazed at me with that lovely haughty expression from the many newspaper photographs covering the sporting life in Asheville, Hot Springs, and Palm Beach.I've heard some gossip about her, some bad things about her, but I've forgotten what it was. ① Several famous tourist destinations in the United States, Miss Baker has been to many times to participate in golf tournaments. "See you tomorrow," she said softly. "Call me at eight, okay?" "As long as you can get up." "I will. Good night, Mr. Calloway. See you some other day." "Of course you'll meet again," Daisy promised. "Honestly, I think I'm going to be a matchmaker. Come on a few more times, Nick, and I'll find a way to -- uh -- bring the two of you together. Like Said, accidentally locked you up in a linen locker, or pushed you out to sea in a boat, or something like that..." "See you tomorrow," cried Miss Baker from the stairs, "I didn't hear a word." "She's a good girl," said Tom after a while, "they shouldn't let her run around like this." "Who shouldn't?" asked Daisy coldly. "Her family." "她家里只有一个七老八十的姑妈。再说，尼克以后可以照应她了，是不是，尼克？她今年夏天要到这里来度许多个周末。我想这里的家庭环境对她会大有好处的。" 黛西和汤姆一声不响地彼此看了一会儿。 "她是纽约州的人吗？"我赶快问。 "路易斯维尔①人。我们纯洁的少女时期是一道在那里度过的。我们那美丽纯洁的……" ①路易斯维尔（Louisville），美国南部肯塔基州的城市。 "你在阳台上是不是跟尼克把心里话都讲了？"汤姆忽然质问。 "我讲了吗？"她看着我，"我好像不记得，不过我们大概谈到了日耳曼种族。对了，我可以肯定我们谈的是那个。它不知不觉就进入了我们的话题，你还没注意到哩……" "别听到什么都信以为真，尼克。"他告诫我道。 我轻松地说我什么都没听到，几分钟之后我就起身告辞了。他们把我送到门口，两人并肩站在方方一片明亮的灯光里。我发动了汽车，忽然黛西命令式地喊道："等等！" "我忘了问你一件事，很重要的。我们听说你在西部跟一个姑娘订婚了。" "不错，"汤姆和蔼地附和说，"我们听说你订婚了。" "那是造谣诽谤。我太穷了。" "可是我们听说了。"黛西坚持说，使我感到惊讶的是她又像花朵一样绽开了。"我们听三个人说过，所以一定是真的。" 我当然知道他们指的是什么事，但是我压根儿没有订婚。流言蜚语传播说我订了婚，这正是我之所以到东部来的一个原因。你不能因为怕谣言就和一个老朋友断绝来往，可是另一方面我也无意迫于谣言的压力就去结婚。 他们对我的关心倒很使我感动，也使他们不显得那么有钱与高不可攀了。虽然如此，在我开车回家的路上，我感到迷惑不解，还有点厌恶。我觉得，黛西应该做的事是抱着孩子跑出这座房子--可是显然她头脑里丝毫没有这种打算。至于汤姆，他"在纽约有个女人"这种事倒不足为怪，奇怪的是他会因为读了一本书而感到沮丧。不知什么东西在使他从陈腐的学说里摄取精神食粮，仿佛他那壮硕的体格的唯我主义已经不再能滋养他那颗唯我独尊的心了。 一路上，小旅馆房顶上和路边汽油站门前已经是一片盛夏景象，鲜红的加油机一台台蹲在电灯光圈里。我回到我在西卵的住处，把车停在小车棚之后，在院子里一架闲置的刈草机上坐了一会儿。风已经停了，眼前是一片嘈杂、明亮的夜景，有鸟雀在树上拍翅膀的声音，还有大地的风箱使青蛙鼓足了气力发出的连续不断的风琴声。一只猫的侧影在月光中慢慢地移动，我掉过头去看它的时候，发觉我不是一个人--五十英尺之外一个人已经从我邻居的大厦的阴影里走了出来，现在两手插在口袋里站在那里仰望银白的星光。从他那悠闲的动作和他那两脚稳踏在草坪上的姿态可以看出他就是盖茨比先生本人，出来确定一下我们本地的天空哪一片是属于他的。 我打定了主意要招呼他。贝克小姐在吃饭时提到过他，那也可以算作介绍了。但我并没招呼他，因为他突然做了个动作，好像表示他满足于独自待着--他朝着幽暗的海水把两只胳膊伸了出去，那样子真古怪，并且尽管我离他很远，我可以发誓他正在发抖。我也情不自禁地朝海上望去--什么都看不出来，除了一盏绿灯，又小又远，也许是一座码头的尽头。等我回头再去看盖茨比时，他已经不见了，于是我又独自待在不平静的黑夜里。