Chapter 4 Chapter Four

On Sunday morning, when the church bells rang through the villages and towns along the coast, the men and women of fashionable society returned to Gatsby's villa to have fun on his lawn. "He's a bootlegger," said the young women, walking somewhere between his cocktails and his fancy flowers, "he killed a man once, and the man found out he was from Hindenburg." Nephew, cousin of the devil. Pass me a rose, baby, and pour me the last drop of wine in that crystal glass." ① Hindenburg (von Hindenburg, 1847-1934), German Field Marshal, served as the commander-in-chief of the German Army during the First World War.

I once wrote in the margins of a train time-table the names of the people who had been to Gatsby's cottage that summer.Now this is a very old timetable, which is about to fall apart along the folds, and it says "this timetable is effective from July 5th, 1922".But I also recognize the dim names, which will give you a clearer impression than my generalizations, of people who visit Gatsby's house without knowing anything about him, as if it were a sign of him. A subtle homage. Well, from East Egg there was Chester Baker and his wife, and Mr and Mrs Leitch, and a Benson I knew at Yale, and Dr. Webster Seawitt, who drowned in Maine last summer.And the Hornbeams, and the Willie Voltaires, and the whole Blackback family, who were always gathered in one corner and turned up their nostrils like goats whenever anyone approached.And the Ishmays, and the Christies (more precisely, the wives of Hubert Auerbach and Mr. Christies), and Edgar Beaver, who is said to have lost his hair for no apparent reason one winter afternoon. Be as white as snow.

As I recall, Clarence Endy was from East Egg.He came only once, in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the garden.From further up the island came the Kedlers, the O. R. P. Slade, the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishgards. The Peaceful Snells.Snell had been there three days before he went to jail, lying so drunk on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulynes Sweet's car went up on his right hand.The Danseys came, too, and S. B. Whitebetter, who was nearly seventy years old, and Maurice A. Frink, the Hamheads, Beluga the tobacco importer, and several of Beluga's girl.

From West Egg came the Balls, the Mulreads, Cecil Robock, Cecil Shawn, State Senator Janrick, and Newton O'Kidd, the backstage boss of Excellence Films, Ike Horst and Clyde Cohen, Don S. Schwartz Jr. and Arthur McGarty, they all had a relationship in one way or another with the film industry.And the Catlips and the Bambergs and G. Earl Muldoon, the brother of the Muldoon who later strangled his wife.The speculator Da Fontano was here, and Ed Legro, and James B. (translated as "Bad Wine") Ferret, and Mrs. De Jong, and Ernest Leary- -They were all there to gamble, and every time Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he lost everything and the second man had another profitable ups and downs in Union Transportation.

A man named Klipspringer was there so often and so long that he was called "the lodger" afterwards--I suspect he had no other home at all.Among those in the theater world were Gus Waitz, Horace O'Donovan, Lester Meyer, George Dekwied and Francis Bull.From New York City came the Croms, the Bakerhyssons, the Denicks, Russell Beatty, the Corrigans, the Kesselhers, the Dowers, the Scoreys, S. W. Belli couple, the Smirks, the now-divorced Quinns Jr., and Henry L. Palmerdo, who later committed suicide by jumping in front of an underground train in Times Square. Bengh McLenahan always came with four girls.They were different each time, but they all looked exactly the same, so they all looked as if they had been here before.I forget their names--Jacqueline, probably, or Conciela, or Gloria, or Judy, or Joan, whose surnames were either sweet-sounding flower names and names of the month, or The dignified surname of the big American capitalists, they will admit to be their distant relatives if they are pressed.

Besides all these people, I remember Faustina O'Brien coming at least once, and the Bedacre sisters, and little Brewer, the one whose nose was shot off in the war, and Mr. Albrooksburg and his fiancée Miss Hager, Mr. and Mrs. Aditya Fitzpeter and Mr. Boo Jewett, who was once the president of the American Legion, and Miss Claudius Shipp and Mrs. A male companion who was supposed to be her chauffeur, and a Prince of So-and-so, whom we called the Duke, whose name I had forgotten even if I had ever known it. All these people came to Gatsby's cottage that summer. At nine o'clock one morning in late July, Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive and pulled up to my door, its three-note horn blasting a melodious blast.It was his first visit to me, though I had already been to two of his parties, flown in his seaplane, and occasionally borrowed his beach at his warm invitation.

"Morning, man. You're having lunch with me today, and I think we'll ride into town together." He stood on the fender of his car, keeping his balance, and that kind of flexible movement is unique to Americans-I think this is due to not doing heavy work when we were young, and more importantly, due to our respective This intense movement creates a natural and graceful posture.This characteristic constantly broke through his prim demeanor in the form of fidgeting.He was never quiet for a moment, but there was always a foot tapping somewhere, or a hand opening and closing impatiently.

He saw me looking at his car with admiration. "It's a nice car, isn't it, man?" He jumped down so I could get a better look. "Have you never seen it before?" I've seen it, everyone has seen it.It was a gorgeous cream, with bright nickel plating, an elongated body, bulging hat boxes, lunch boxes, and tool boxes, and layers of windshields reflecting a dozen suns. brilliant.We sat down behind many layers of glass in the greenhouse-like green leather carriage and headed for the city. I've talked to him maybe five or six times in the past month.To my disappointment, I found he had little to say.So my initial impression that he was someone of considerable importance had faded away, that he was merely the proprietor of a fancy country restaurant next door.

Then came the car trip that embarrassed me.We hadn't even reached West Egg when Gatsby began to stop his elegant sentences in mid-sentence, patting hesitantly on the knee of his caramel suit. "Look, man," he said aloud unexpectedly, "what do you think of me anyway?" I was a little overwhelmed, so I started to say some vague words to prevaricate. "Come on, let me tell you about my own story," he interrupted. "You hear so much gossip that I don't want you to get a wrong idea of ​​me from it." It turned out that he knew the quaint gossip that spiced up his drawing-room conversations.

"As God bears witness, I will tell you the truth." His right hand suddenly commanded the heavenly punishment to be ready. "I'm the son of a rich family in the Midwest - all dead. I was raised in America, but I was educated in Oxford, because my family has been educated in Oxford for generations. It's a family tradition ." He squinted at me -- and that's when I realized why Jordan Baker had thought he was lying.He hurried through the phrase "educated at Oxford," either vaguely or half-baked, as if it had made him mutter before.With this doubt, his whole self-report doesn't hold water, so I suspect that he has something to hide after all.

"Where in the Midwest?" I asked casually. "San Francisco." ① San Francisco is on the west coast, not in the Midwest. "Oh, that's right." "Everyone in my family died, so I inherited a lot of money." His voice was serious, as if he still remembered the sudden demise of his family.For a moment I suspected he was playing a trick on me, but one look at him convinced me otherwise. "Later, like a young oriental prince, I went to the capitals of Europe as an apartment--Paris, Venice, Rome--whether it was collecting jewels mainly made of rubies, hunting lions and tigers, or painting some pictures, Just for my own amusement, and trying to forget an incident that caused me so much grief long ago." It was hard for me not to laugh because his words were unbelievable.The phrasing itself is so trite that in my head there is nothing but this image: a "character" in a hooded puppet show chasing a tiger in Bron Park, taking every bit of his body as he runs. Sawdust leaked out of the hole. ①In the suburbs of Paris, there are large forests. "And then came the war, man. It was a great relief. I tried everything to kill me, but my life seemed to be blessed by the gods. When the war started, I got the rank of lieutenant. In the battle of Argonne Forest, I led My detachments of two machine-gun companies went so far that we ended up with half a mile of open space on either side where the infantry couldn't advance. We were there two days and two nights, one hundred and thirty men, sixteen Lewis machine guns .When the infantry came up, they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of corpses.I was promoted to major, and every Allied government gave me a medal-including Montenegro. , that little door of Montenegro on the Adriatic." Negro of the small door!He seemed to hold the words up, nodding and smiling at them.This smile shows that he understands the history of the turmoil in Montenegro and sympathizes with the heroic struggle of the people of Montenegro.This smile also showed that he fully understood the series of circumstances in that country that had caused the warm little heart of Montenegro to utter this tribute.My doubts had now turned to wonder.It's like flipping through a dozen magazines in a hurry. He reached into his pocket, and a piece of metal attached to a ribbon fell into the palm of my hand. "This is the one from Montenegro." To my surprise, this thing looked real. "Order of Danilo", with an inscription on a circle above it: "Nizanlas, King of Montenegro". "flip over." "Major Jay Gatsby," I read, "outrageously brave" "Here's another thing I have with me, a memento of Oxford Shiron, photographed in the Trinity campus—the man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster." It's a picture of five or six young men in blazers, standing at the gate of an arcade, with many spires visible behind them, including Gatsby, younger than now, but also younger Not much -- a cricket bat in his hand. ① Most of the Oxford school buildings are Gothic buildings with many spiers. So it looks like what he said is true.I seem to see the skins of tigers of various colors hanging on the armor of his palace on the Grand Canal; I seem to see him open a chest of rubies and use their rich red light to ease the pain of his broken heart. . ① Refers to the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. "I have an important business to ask for your help today," he said, pocketing his souvenir with satisfaction. "So I think you ought to know about me. I don't want you to think I'm just a dud. You know, I've been in company with strangers a lot, because I've been wandering about trying to forget the sad thing. "He hesitated, "You can hear about this this afternoon." "At lunch?" "No, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you had tea with Miss Baker." "You mean you're in love with Miss Baker?" "No, man, I haven't. But with Miss Baker's permission, let me talk to you about it." I had no idea what "this thing" meant, but I was bored rather than interested.I didn't invite Miss Baker to tea to talk about Mr. Jay Gatsby.I'm sure he's asking for something fantastic, and for a while I regret stepping on his overcrowded lawn. He didn't say a word.The closer we got to the city, the more (spear today) he insisted.We passed Roosevelt Harbor, caught a glimpse of an ocean liner with a red-painted hull, and sped along a slum gravel road lined with dark, well-populated pubs from the faded Gilded Age of the early twentieth century.Then the valley of ashes stretched out on either side of us, and I caught a glimpse from the car of Mrs. Wilson gasping for breath at the gas pump. The car's fenders spread out like wings.We brought light to half of Astoria along the way--only half, for as we weaved among the pillars of the elevated railway, I heard the familiar "beep-- -beep-crack" sound, and then saw a frantic policeman driving beside our car. ①A section of Queens. "There, old man," Gatsby called.We slowed down.Gatsby took a white card from his wallet and waved it before the policeman's eyes. "Well, you," the policeman agreed, and touched the brim of his hat lightly, "I'll meet you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Please forgive me!" "What's that?" I asked. "The Oxford picture?" "I did a favor for the police chief once, so he sends me a Christmas card every year." On the human bridge, sunlight shines through the middle of the steel frame and glistens on the endless traffic, and the buildings in the city on the other side of the river stand tall in front of your eyes, like piles of white sugar lumps, all out of good intentions and money that doesn’t smell like money covered.Seen from the Queensboro Bridge, this city will always seem to be seen for the first time, so fascinating, full of all the mysteries and magnificence in the world. A hearse of the dead passed us, heaped with flowers, followed by two carriages, with the blinds drawn, and a lighter carriage carrying relatives and friends, who came to the We looked around, and we could tell from their sad eyes and short upper lip that they were from the Ernanou area.I was glad to see Gatsby's luxurious car in their miserable funeral caravan.When our car crossed Blackwell Island from the bridge.A limousine passed us, the driver was a white man, and in the car sat three stylish Negroes, two men and a woman.They rolled their eyes at us with such an air of arrogance that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Anything can happen once we cross this bridge now," I thought to myself, "Anything can happen..." Therefore, it is not surprising that even characters like Gatsby will appear. Hot noon.Gatsby and I met for lunch in a fanned basement restaurant on Forty-second Street.I blinked away the light from the road outside before I vaguely recognized him in the lounge, talking to someone. "Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem." A small, snub-nosed Jew raised his big head to look at me, with two thick tufts of hair growing inside his nostrils.It was a while before I spotted his small eyes in the half-light. "...so I glanced at him," went on Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand eagerly, "and then, guess what I did?" "What's the matter?" I asked politely. Apparently he wasn't talking to me, for he dropped my hand and pointed his expressive nose at Gatsby. "I handed the money to Katzberg, and at the same time I said to him: That's it, Katzberg, if you don't keep your mouth shut, you won't get a penny. He shut up right away." Gatsby took each of us by the arm and walked forward into the dining room, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed his first sentence and looked dreamy. "Would you like ginger ale?" asked the head waiter. "This one here is a nice one," said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking up at the beautiful Presbyterian woman on the ceiling, "but I prefer the one across the road." "All right, some Ginger Ale," agreed Gatsby, and said to Mr. Wolfshiem, "it's too hot over there." "Hot and small--not bad," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "but full of memories." "Which restaurant is that?" I asked. "Old Metropolis." "Old Metropolis," recalled Mr. Wolfshiem sullenly, "how many long-gone faces and now-dead friends gathered there. As long as I live I will not forget that they shot Rosie ... That evening in Rosenthal. We were a table of six, and Rosie ate and drank all night. Towards dawn, the waiter came to him with an embarrassed look and said he had been asked to speak outside. All right, said Rosie, about to stand up, and I yanked him back into the chair. "The bastards are after you, let them in, Rosie, but you must never leave this room." "It was four o'clock in the morning, and if we had raised the curtains, we would have seen daylight." "Did he go?" I asked naively. "Of course he did." Mr. Wolfshiem snapped his nose at me angrily. "He got to the door and turned around and said: Don't let that waiter take away my coffee! And then he went out on the pavement and they shot him three times in his well-fed belly and drove away gone." "Four of them were in the electric chair." I said as I remembered. "Five, including Baker." He turned his nostrils toward me with interest. "I hear you're looking for a business connection." The combination of these two sentences is shocking.Gatsby answered for me: "Oh, no," he said aloud, "this is not the man." "Isn't it?" Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed. "It's just a friend. I told you we'll talk about that another day." "I'm sorry," said Mr. Wolfshiem, "but I made a mistake." A delicious plate of meat and roast was brought up, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the much warmer atmosphere of the old Metropolis, began to eat with dignity.At the same time his eyes moved slowly, making his rounds of the dining-room.He turned around again to look at the guest sitting immediately behind us, thus completing the full circle.I think if I hadn't been there, he'd have looked under our own table too. "Look, man," said Gatsby, sticking out his head to me, "I'm afraid I pissed you off in the car this morning?" There was that smile on his face again, but this time I was indifferent. "I don't like mysteries," I replied, "and I don't understand why you don't come out and let me know what you want. Why must it all go through Miss Baker?" "Oh, nothing furtive," he assured me. "Miss Baker is a great campaigner, as you know, and she never does anything shady." Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried out of the dining room, leaving Mr. Wolfshiem and me at the table. "He's got to call," said Mr. Wolfshiem, watching him out. "Good guy, isn't he? A good-looking man, and a very good man." "yes." "He was born in Niu Jin." ① Niu Jin, the corrupted sound of "Oxford". "Oh!" "He went to Nixon University in England. Do you know Nixon University?" "I heard it before." "It's one of the most prestigious universities in the world." "Have you known Gatsby for a long time?" I asked. "Several years," he replied contentedly, "I met him by chance just after the war. But I talked to him only an hour before I found a very educated man. I Just say to yourself: This is the kind of person you'd take home and introduce your mother and sister to." He paused and said, "I know you're looking at my cufflinks." I didn't look at it at first, but now I look backwards.They were made of small pieces of ivory and looked strangely familiar. "Made from selected real molars," he told me. "Really!" I looked carefully. "That's a very good idea." "Yes." He tucked his shirtcuffs back under his jacket. "Yes, Gatsby is very orderly when it comes to women. He doesn't even look at his friends' wives." When the object of instinctive reliance returned to sit at the table, Mr. Walter Sam drank his coffee in one gulp, and rose to his feet. "I had a good lunch," said he, "and now I'm going to leave you two young men, lest you think I'm not funny." "Take it easy, Meyer," said Gatsby, not at all enthusiastic.Walter Sam Kosei raised his hand in blessing. "You're very polite, but I'm an old man," he said gravely. "Sit here and talk about sports, talk about your young women, talk about your..." He held his hand again. With a wave, instead of an imaginary noun, "As for me, I'm already fifty years old, and I won't bother you anymore." He shook hands with us and turned away, his sad nose quivering again.I don't know if I said something to offend him. "He can get very sentimental sometimes," Gatsby explained, "and it's another sad day for him. He's a man in New York—the king of Broadway." "Who the hell is he? Is he an actor?" "no. "dentist?" "Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added nonchalantly, "He's the man who illegally fixed the World Series in 1919." "Illegally manipulating the World League Baseball?" I repeated. There is such a thing, I was stunned when I heard it.I remember, of course, that the World Series was rigged in 1919, but even if I had thought about it, I would have thought it was just a thing that happened, the aftermath of a series of inevitable events.It never occurred to me that one man could fool fifty million people with the single-mindedness of a thief who breaks open a safe. "How did he do that?" I asked after a minute. "He just saw an opportunity," "Why isn't he in jail?" "They can't catch him, man. He's a very smart man." I rushed to pay the bill.As the waiter brought the change, I saw Tom Buchanan on the crowded side of the restaurant. "Come with me," I said, "I have to say hello to someone." Tom jumped up when he saw us, and took five or six steps in our direction. "Where have you been?" he asked eagerly. "Daisy is mad because you didn't call." "This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan." They shook hands casually, and Gatsby's face suddenly took on an unnatural, unusual look of embarrassment. "What's going on with you?" Tom asked me. "How did you come all the way here to eat?" "I came to lunch with Mr. Gatsby." I turned to look at Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there. One day in October, 1917-- (Jordan Baker said that afternoon she was sitting upright in an upright chair in the tea room of the Plaza Hotel.) --I am walking from one place to another, half on the sidewalk, half on the lawn.I prefer to walk on the lawn because I wear a pair of British shoes with rubber bumps on the soles that leave marks on the soft ground.I also wore a new plaid skirt that flapped slightly in the wind. Whenever the skirt flapped in the wind, the red, white, and blue tricolor flags in front of everyone's houses stood upright and said "tsk." --tsk-tsk-tsk" sounded very disapproving. Some of the biggest flags and some of the nicest lawns belonged to Daisy Fay's family.She was just eighteen years old, two years older than me, and the most flamboyant of all the ladies in Louisville.She wore white clothes and drove a small white sports car. Her home phone kept ringing all day long, and all the excited young officers in Camp Taylor demanded to have all of her time exclusively that night. "Give me an hour, at least!" When I passed across from her house that morning, her white sports car was parked on the side of the road, and she was riding with a lieutenant I had never seen before.They were so engrossed in each other that she didn't see me until I was within five paces. "Hello, Jordan," she called unexpectedly, "please come here." I was honored that she wanted to talk to me, because of all the girls older than me, I admired her most.She asked me if I went to the Red Cross to get bandages.I say yes.So, can I please tell them that she can't come that day?The officer stared at Daisy as she spoke, the way every girl wishes to be looked at at times.Because I thought it was very romantic, so I always remember this episode afterward.His name was Jay Gatsby, and I hadn't seen him for more than four years since—even after I met him on Long Island, I didn't know it was the same man. That was 1917.By the second year, I had a couple of boyfriends myself, and I started competing, so I didn't see Daisy very often.She was with a bunch of friends a little older than me--if she was with anyone at all.There were wild rumors about her--that her mother had found her packing one winter night to go to New York to say good-bye to a soldier who was going overseas.The family effectively stopped her, but she did not speak to them for several weeks afterwards.Since then, she has stopped playing with the soldiers, and only hangs out with a few flat-footed and short-sighted young people in the city who cannot join the army at all. By the fall of the following year, she was active again, as active as ever.After the Armistice she went to a debutante ball, and in February she was said to have been engaged to a man from New Orleans.In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with a grandeur and splendor unheard of in Louisville.He traveled south with one hundred guests in four chartered cars and rented an entire floor of the Morbach Hotel. On the day before the wedding, he gave her a string of pearls estimated to be worth $350,000. I'm one of the bridesmaids.Half an hour before the wedding-eve farewell party, I went into her house and found her lying in bed, in her embroidered dress, as beautiful as that June night, as drunk as a monkey.She held a bottle of white wine in one hand and a letter in the other. "Congratulations to me," she murmured indistinctly, "I've never had a drink before, ah, I had a good drink today." "What's the matter, Daisy?" I was terrified.Really, I've never seen a girl so drunk. "Here, sweetheart." She fumbled for a while in the wastebasket she had brought to the bed, and pulled out the string of pearls. "Take this downstairs, and give it back to whoever it is. Tell everyone, Daisy." Sy changed her mind. Just say Daisy changed her mind!" She began to cry -- she cried and cried.I ran out and found her mother's valet, and we locked the door and gave her a cold shower.She clutched the letter tightly.She took the letter into the tub, crumpled it into a wet ball, and didn't let me take it and put it in the soap dish until she saw it crumble like snowflakes. But she said nothing more.We asked her to ask for ammonia, put ice on her forehead, and dressed her again.We walked out of the room half an hour later, the string of pearls was put around her neck, and the turmoil was over.At five o'clock the next afternoon she married Tom Buchanan as if nothing had happened, and set off for a three-month trip to the South Pacific. When they came back, I saw them in Santa Barbara, and I don't think I've ever seen a girl so infatuated with her husband.If he left the room for a moment, she would look about anxiously, say, "Where's Tom?" and keep a dazed look on her face until she saw him coming in the door. .She would often sit on the beach for an hour or so, letting him rest his head on her lap, gently massaging his eyes with her fingers, and looking at him with infinite joy.Seeing the two of them together really moved you -- fascinated you, made you smile.That was in August.A week after I left Santa Barbara, Tom collided with a van one night on the Ventura Highway and knocked one of the front wheels off his car.The girl with him was in the papers because she broke her arm--she was a housemaid in a Santa Barbara hotel. ①California seaside resort. In April of the following year Daisy gave birth to her little daughter, and they went to France for a year.I saw them one spring in Cannes, then in Deauville, and then they settled back in Chicago.Daisy is very popular in Chicago, you know that.They hang out with a lot of people, all young and rich and dissolute, but her reputation has always been clean.Maybe it's because she doesn't drink.It is very advantageous to be among those who drink and not to drink yourself.You can keep your mouth shut, and, moreover, you can time your own little moves until everyone else is too drunk to see or ignore them.Perhaps Daisy has never liked to engage in any sexual affairs-but there is something strange in her voice... ①The seaport in the south of France, a tourist resort. ②Tourist resort in northwest France. Then, about six weeks ago, she had heard the name Gatsby for the first time in many years.That's the time I asked you -- do you remember -- did you know Gatsby at West Egg? After you got home, she came into my room and woke me up and asked me, "Which Gatsby is there?" ?” I described him—I was half asleep—and she said in the weirdest voice that it must be someone she knew from the past.Only then did I connect this Gatsby with the officer who sat in her white sports car. By the time Jordan Baker had finished all of the above, we had left the Plaza half an hour before we drove through Central Park in an open carriage.The sun was already setting behind the movie star apartment buildings on West Fifties when the children gathered like crickets in the meadow and their crisp voices sang in the sweltering evening heat: I am the head of Arabia, Your love is on my heart. Tonight when you are sleepy, I'll climb into your tent-- "What a strange coincidence," I said. "But it's no coincidence at all." "Why not?" "Gatsby bought that house because it would put Daisy across the bay." So, what he yearned for that night in June was not just the battle in the sky.Gatsby came to life in my eyes, suddenly giving birth from the purposeless luxury of his womb. "He wanted to know," continued Jordan, "whether you'd like to have Daisy come to your place some afternoon, and let him come and sit." It astounds me that this request is so trivial.He actually waited five years and bought another mansion where he gave starlight to the moths that came and went - so that one afternoon he could "sit" in a stranger's garden. "Do I have to know all this before he can ask me this little thing?" "He's scared, he's waited too long. He thinks you might be offended. He's actually pretty tenacious, though." I still can't let go. "Why doesn't he ask you to arrange a meeting?" "He's going to show her his house," she explained, "and yours is just next door." "Oh!" "I think he was expecting her to come to one of his parties some night," Jordan went on, "but she never came, and then he started asking people, knowingly or not, if they knew her, and I The first person he found. It was the night at the ball that he sent for me, but you didn't hear how he took the trouble to get to the point, and of course I immediately suggested a lunch in New York- -Unexpectedly, he was so anxious that he was going crazy: I don't want to do anything wrong! He kept saying, I just want to meet her next door. "Then I said you were a good friend of Tom's, and he tried to dismiss the idea altogether. He didn't know much about Tom, though he said he'd been reading a Chicago paper for years, hoping by chance to see Daisy's name." 这时天黑了，我们的马车走到一座小桥下面，我伸出胳臂搂住乔丹的金黄色肩膀，把她拉到我身边，请她一起吃晚饭。忽然之间，我想的已经不是黛两和盖茨比，而是这个干净、结实、智力有限的人，她对世问的切都抱怀疑态度，她怪精神地往后靠在我伸出的胳臂上。一个警句开始在我耳中令人兴奋地激动鸣响："世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌的人和疲倦的人。" "黛西生活里也应当有点安慰。"乔丹喃喃地对我说。 "她愿意见盖茨比吗？" "事光是不让她知道的。盖茨比不要她知道。你只是请她来喝茶。" 我们经过了一排黑黝黝的树，然后五十九号街的高楼里一片柔和的灯光照到下面公园中来。跟盖茨比和汤姆·布坎农不一样，我的眼前没有什么情人的面影沿着阴暗的檐口和耀眼的招牌缥缈浮动，于是我把身边这个女孩子拉得更近一点，同时胳臂搂得更紧。她那张苍白、轻藐的嘴嫣然一笑，于是我把她拉得更紧一点，这次一直拉到贴着我的脸。