Chapter 9 Chapter nine

Two years later, I think back on the rest of that day, that night and the next day, only in waves of policemen, photographers, and journalists coming and going at Gatsby's front door.The outside gate was barred with a rope and a policeman stood by to keep the onlookers out, but the little boys soon discovered they could come around my yard, so there were always a few dumbfounded crowds. Next to the swimming pool.Someone with a confident air, perhaps a detective, used the word "crazy" as he looked down at Wilson's body that afternoon, and the accidental authority of his tone set the tone for all the newspaper reports the next morning. tone.

Most of those reports were a nightmare -- outlandish, speculative, serious and untrue.After Michelis' testimony at the autopsy revealed Wilson's suspicions of his wife, I thought the whole story would soon be embellished and published in the dirty tabloids -- but Catherine, who could have said so much, didn't. said, and with astonishing force--looking straight at the coroner with her determined eyes under her traced eyebrows, and swearing that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister lived with her husband Very happy together, said her sister never had any misbehavior.Convincing herself of what she said, she put her handkerchief to her face and wept bitterly again, as if she could not bear to be asked such a question, and Wilson was reduced to a "sorrowful madman" for the purpose of the case. The plot can be kept as simple as possible.And so the case was closed.

But this aspect of the matter seemed entirely innocuous and irrelevant.I found myself on Gatsby's side, and by myself.From the moment I called West Egg to report the tragedy, every speculation about him, every practical question, came to me.At first I was amazed and bewildered, but as the hours passed and he was still lying in his house, not moving, not breathing or talking, it dawned on me that I was in charge because there was no one else but me Interested--I mean, that intense personal interest that everyone is more or less entitled to after all. I called Daisy half an hour after we found his body, and I called her instinctively and without hesitation.But she and Tom had left early that afternoon, taking their luggage with them.

"No address?" "No." "Say when they'll be back?" "No. "Do you know where they are? How can I get in touch with them?" "I don't know, I can't tell." I really want to find someone for him.I really wanted to go into the room where he lay and comfort him and say, "I'll find you someone, Gatsby. Don't worry. Believe me, I'll find you someone...  " Meyer Wolfshiem's ​​name is not in the phone book.The butler gave me the address of his Broadway office, and I called the Telephone Information Desk, but by the time I had the number it was well past five and no one answered.

"Would you please shake it again?" "I've shaken it three times." "There is something very urgent." "Sorry, I'm afraid there's no one there." I went back to the living room, which was suddenly filled with official personnel, which at first I thought were some unexpected visitors.Although they threw back the covers and looked at Gatsby in horror, his protest continued to echo in my head: "I said, man, you've got to get someone for me. You've got to figure something out. I can't stand this alone." Somebody came to me with a question, and I got away and ran upstairs and rummaged through the unlocked drawers of my desk—he never explicitly told me his parents were dead, but nothing Not to be found—only that photograph of Dan Cody, the forgotten symbol of a life of brutal violence, peering down from the wall.

Next morning I sent the butler to New York to deliver a letter to Wolfshiem asking for news and begging him to come by the next train.As I write this, the request seems superfluous.I thought he would come as soon as he saw the paper, just as I thought there would be a telegram from Daisy before noon—but there was no telegram, and neither did Mr. Wolfshiem.No one came, just more police, photographers and journalists.By the time the butler came back with Wolfshiem's ​​reply, I began to feel condescending, to feel that Gatsby and I could unite and look down on them all. Dear Mr Calloway: I am so shocked by this news that I hardly dare

Believe it is true.The madness of that man should make us all think think.I can't come right now because I've got some very important business going on at the moment Can't be involved in this matter.If there is anything I can contribute to later, please send Edgar sent me a letter to inform me.I don't know where I am when I hear this Here, I feel that the sky is dim and the earth is dark. your faithful, meyer wolfshiem rushes down again Attached is a: Please let us know about funeral arrangements.Also: I don't know his family members at all. When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said there was a call from Chicago, I thought it must be Day.

It's gone, but when it's connected, it's a man's voice, very soft and far away. "I'm Sligo..." "Really?" The name was unfamiliar. "That letter was awful, wasn't it? Did you get my telegram?" "No telegram at all." "Unlucky little Packer," he said quickly, "he got caught handing over the papers over the counter. They got a notice from New York just five minutes ago with the number listed. Do you want it? You don't expect that in the country..." "Hello! hello!" I interrupted him out of breath. "Listen to me—I'm not Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone line, followed by a scream...and then the phone hung up with a click. I think it was about the third day that a telegram came from a small town in Minnesota signed Henry C. Getz.All it said was that the generator was leaving at once, and that the funeral should not be held until his arrival. It was Gatsby's father, a very stately old man, very poor and very depressed, wrapped up in a long, poor coat on such a warm September day.He was so excited that tears kept streaming down his face. When I took the travel bag and umbrella from him, he kept reaching out to pull his thin gray beard.I managed to help him take off his coat.He was about to collapse, and it wasn't me who took him into the concert hall, sat him down, and sent someone to get something to eat, but he refused to eat, and the glass of milk came from his trembling mouth. spilled out of hand

"I've read it in the Chicago papers," he said. "It's all in the Chicago papers, and I'm off right away." "I can't tell you." His eyes were blind, but he kept looking around the room. "A madman did it," he said. "He must be mad." "Will you have a cup of coffee?" I advised him. "I don't want anything. I'm fine now, you are..." "Carraway." "Uh, I'm fine now. Where did they put Jamie?" I led him into the living room where his son lay, and left him there.Several little boys had climbed the steps and were looking into the hall.When I told them who was coming, they reluctantly walked away.

After a while, Mr. Gates opened the door and came out. His mouth was parted, his face was slightly red, and his eyes "wept intermittently. He has reached the age where death is not regarded as a terrible thing. Looking around for the first time, and beholding such a stately hall, with great rooms leading from it to other rooms, his sorrow began to be mingled with a feeling of astonishment and pride. I I took him upstairs to a bedroom, and while he was taking off his coat and waistcoat, I told him that everything was postponed until he could decide. "I didn't know what you were going to do, Mr. Gatsby..." "My last name is Gates." "Mr. Gates, I thought you might be taking the body west." He shook his head. "Jamie always liked being in the East. He rose to his stature in the East. Are you my boy's friend, sir?" "We are very close friends." "He's got a lot going on, you know. He's just a young man, but he's capable in this place." He solemnly touched his head with his hand, and I nodded too. "If he had lived, he would have been a big man, a James J. Hill sort of man, and he would have helped build the country." ①James J. Hill (james.J.Hill, 1838-l916), the king of American railways. "That's true," I said awkwardly. He fumbled at the embroidered quilt, trying to pull it off the bed, and lay down stiffly--and instantly fell asleep. That night an apparently frightened man called and would not give his name until he knew who I was. "I'm Calloway One," I said. "Oh!" he seemed relieved, "I'm Klipspringer." I am also relieved, because this way Gatsby may have one more friend at his grave.I didn't want to publish in the newspaper and attract a lot of onlookers, so I called a few people myself.They are so hard to find. "Tomorrow's funeral," I said, "at three o'clock in the afternoon, here at home. I want you to tell anyone who would like to attend." "Oh, sure," he said hastily, "of course I'm not likely to meet anybody, but if I do." His tone made me suspicious. "Of course you will come yourself." "Uh, try to figure it out. I'm calling to ask..." "Wait," I interrupted his work, "how about saying that you must come first?" "Well, the truth is... the fact of the matter is that I'm staying at a friend's house here in Greenwich, and I'm expected to hang out with them tomorrow. In fact, I'm going to have a picnic or something tomorrow. Of course I'll get away if I can." ." I couldn't help yelling "Hey", and he must have heard it, because he went on nervously: "I'm calling for a pair of shoes I left there. Wondering if you could have the butler send them to me, you know, those are tennis shoes, and I can't do without them. My address is B.F..." I hung up the microphone before he had finished saying the name. I was ashamed of Gatsby after that - and someone I called up said he deserved it.It was my fault, though, because he was one of those guests who yelled at Gatsby after drinking enough of Gatsby's, and I shouldn't have called him in the first place. On the morning of the funeral, I went to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem.It seemed impossible to find him any other way.Under the guidance of the elevator driver, I pushed open a door with "口字控股公司" written on it, but at first there seemed to be no one inside, but I shouted "Hello" a few times, but no one answered. Then there were sudden voices of argument behind a partition, and then a handsome Jewish woman appeared at one of the inner doorways, and looked at me with hostile black eyes. "Nobody's home," she said. "Mr. Wolfshiem has gone to Chicago." The previous sentence was obviously a lie, because someone inside had already begun whistling the Rosary incoherently. "Please tell him Calloway wants to see him." "I can't call him back from Chicago, can I?" Just then a voice, undoubtedly Wolfshiem's, called "Stella" from the other side of the door. "You leave your name on the table," she said quickly, "and I'll tell him when he comes back." "But I know he's in there." She took a step in front of me and started moving her hands up and down her hips angrily. "You young men think you can break in here at any time," she cursed, "and we're sick of it. I said he's in Chicago, and he's in Chicago." I mentioned Gatsby's name. "Oh... ah!" She looked at me again, "Please wait a moment... what is your last name?" she is gone.A moment later Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, both hands outstretched.He drew me into his office and offered me a cigar while saying reverently that we were all sad at times like this. "I still remember the first time I saw him," he said, "a young major who had just left the army, his chest covered with medals he had won in battle. He was so poor that he continued to wear his uniform because he Can't afford civilian clothes. The first time I saw him was the day he walked into Wynn Blanner's billiard room on 43rd Street looking for a job. He hasn't eaten in two days. Come and have lunch with me. I said. In less than half an hour, he ate a meal worth more than four dollars." "Did you help him start the business?" I asked. "Help him! I made him." "Oh" "I raised him from scratch, picked him up in the gutter. I saw him as a handsome, well-mannered young man at a glance, and when he told me that he was a good guy, I knew I could send him big." Useful. I got him in the American Legion, and he got pretty high up there. As soon as he got off he went off to Albany to do a job for a client of mine. We're both like that in every way. Intimacy," he held up two fat fingers, "together forever." ① Albany (Albany), the capital of New York State. I wondered if this partnership included the 1919 World League deal. "And now he's dead," I said after a while, "you were his best friend, so I know you'll be at his funeral this afternoon." "I'd love to come." "Well, here we go." The hairs in his nostrils trembled slightly, and he shook his head, tears welling up in his eyes. "I can't come...I can't get involved," he said. "There's nothing to get involved in. It's over now." "When someone is killed, I don't want to be involved in anything. I don't get involved. I was very different when I was young—if a friend dies, no matter how it dies, I always help out. You might think that It's sentimental, but I mean what I say -- fight to the end." I saw that he was determined not to go, and he had his own reasons.So I stood up. "Did you graduate from college?" He asked me suddenly. For a moment I thought he was going to propose some "relationship," but he just nodded and shook my hand. "We should all learn to befriend a friend while he is alive, not after he is dead," he said. "After death, my personal rule is to keep one's business out of business." It was dark when I left his office, and I returned to West Egg in a drizzle.I went next door after changing and saw Mr. Gates walking up and down the hall excitedly.His pride in his son and his son's belongings has been growing, and now he has one more thing to show me. "This picture Jamie sent me." He pulled out his wallet with trembling fingers. "Look." It was a photograph of the house, cracked at the corners, and soiled by many hands.He eagerly pointed out every detail to me. "Look!" Then he looked to see if there was a look of appreciation in my eyes.He has shown this photo to others so many times, I believe that the photo is more real than the real house in the eyes of the earth "Jamie sent it to me and I thought it was a nice photo, well done" "Very well. Have you seen him lately?" "He came home to visit me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we were sad when he ran away from the house, but I understand now that he had a reason for that. He knows himself He has a great future, and it will be very kind to me for him to leave after his fortune." He seemed unwilling to put the photo back, and held it up in front of my eyes for a while more reluctantly.Then he put the wallet back and took out from his pocket a battered old book called "Born Cassidy" "You see, he wrote this book when he was a kid. It's a real one." He opened the book to the bottom and turned it around for me to read. On the last blank page were written the words "timetable" and the date of September 12, 1906.Below is: Get up at 6:00 am Dumbbell gymnastics and wall climbing 6:15-6:30 Learning electricity, etc. 7:15－8:15 Work 8:50-4:30 pm Baseball and other sports 4:30-5:00 pm Practice speech and manners 5:00-6:00 Learning useful new inventions 7:00－9:00 personal determination Don't waste your time going to the Shafters or (another last name, illegible) stop smoking or chewing tobacco bath every other day Read a good book or magazine every week Save five yuan per week (redout) and three yuan Be more considerate to parents "I found this book by accident," said the old man. "It's a real book, isn't it?" "It's true that I have grown up since I was a child." "Jamie was meant to get ahead, he always had resolutions like that. Did you notice how he improved his mind? He's always been great at it. Said once I ate like Like a pig, I beat him up." He couldn't bear to close the book, read each item aloud, and then looked at me helplessly.I think he fully expected that I would copy that chart down for my own use. Just before three o'clock the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look out the window involuntarily to see if there were any other cars coming.Gatsby's father was the same as me.As time passed, the servants came in and waited in the hallway A, the old man's eyes blinked anxiously, and at the same time he talked about the rain outside nervously.The vicar looked at his watch several times, and I had to take him aside and ask him to wait another half-hour, but to no avail.No one came. Around five o'clock, our three-vehicle train arrived at the base and stopped beside the gate in the dense drizzle—the first one was a hearse, which was dark and wet and ugly, followed by Mr. Gates and the pastor. I was in the limousine, and a little behind were four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all drenched.Just as we were walking through the gate and onto the grounds, I heard a car pull up, followed by the sound of a man coming up behind us on the sodden grass.I looked back and saw that it was the man with the owl glasses who I found one night three months ago amazed at the books in Gatsby's library. I haven't seen him since.I don't know how he knew the burial today, and I don't know the name of the place.The rain ran down his thick spectacles, and he had to take them off and wipe them, and watch the canvas roll up from Gatsby's grave. I was tempted to recall Gatsby at this moment, but he was so far away that I only remembered that Daisy had neither sent a telegram nor sent flowers, but I was not offended.I vaguely heard someone murmur, "God bless the dead in the rain." Then the man with the owl glasses said in a booming voice, "Amen!" We ran back to the car in bits and pieces in the rain.The man with the owl glasses spoke to me at the gate. "I couldn't make it to the villa," he said. "No one else was able to come." "Really!" he was startled. "Oh, my God! They used to come by hundreds." He took off his glasses and wiped them inside and out. "This guy is fucking pathetic," he said. One of the most vivid images in my memory is the return west each Christmas from prep school, and later from college.Students who went to places other than Chicago often gathered at the old, dark Union Station at six o'clock on a December evening, and hurriedly said goodbye to a few friends who lived in Chicago, only to find that they had already wrapped themselves in their own lives. festive atmosphere.I remember the fur coats of the schoolgirls who came back from the so-and-so private girls' school in the East and their laughter and chatter in the freezing air, I remember calling out to each other when we found acquaintances, I remember comparing the invitations we received: "You are going to Austria. The Dulwich's? The Hussey's? The Schultz's?" Remember the long green tickets clutched in our gloved hands.And finally there's the hazy yellow passenger car of the Chicago-Milwaukee-St. As the train raced through the dark winter night, the real snow, our snow, began to spread far away on both sides, and shone against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations passed by, when suddenly a Refreshing chill.Breathing the cold deeply as we walked back from dinner through the cold corridors, and for a singular hour conscious of our flesh-and-blood ties to the country, we It is about to melt into it again without leaving a trace. This is my Midwest - not the wheat fields, not the prairies, not the deserted villages of Swedish immigrants, but the thrilling homecoming trains of my youth, the street lights and sleigh bells in the cold night, Christmas The holly wreath was reflected in the snow by the light in the window.I was part of it, a little reserved from those long winters, a little smug in my attitude from growing up at Callaway Hall.In our city, people's residences are still called mansions of a certain surname from generation to generation.I now understand that this story is ultimately a Western story--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy, Jordan and I, we are all Westerners, and maybe we have some common defect that makes us unable to adapt to life in the East. Even when the East excites me the most, even when I feel most keenly, the East has an incomparable quality compared to the dreary, rambling towns beyond the Ohio River, where only the children and the elderly are spared the endless gossip. The superiority of the East—even then, I always felt that there was something monstrous about the East, and West Egg, in particular, still popped up in my wilder dreams.In my dream, the town was like a night scene painted by El Greco: a hundred houses, both ordinary and grotesque, crouched under a gloomy sky and a dim moon.In the foreground four stern-faced men in frock coats walk along the sidewalk, carrying a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress.One of her hands drooped to one side, gleaming coldly with jewels.The men turned solemnly and walked into a house--in the wrong place.But no one knew the woman's name, and no one cared. ① El Greco (El Greco, about 1541-1614), a Spanish painter.Most of the works use religious themes, and use gloomy tones to render a surreal atmosphere. After Gatsby's death, the East was so ghostly to me, so unrecognizable beyond the power of my eyes to correct it, that when the blue smoke of burnt leaves filled the air and the cold wind blew away the wet clothes hanging on the line When bang bang was hard, I decided to go home. One more thing to do before I leave, an embarrassing, unpleasant affair that probably should have been let go, but I hope to get it sorted out without counting on that helpful, unfeeling sea Flush my trash out.I went to see Jordan Baker and talked all the way around what happened between the two of us and what happened to me afterward, and she was lying in a big chair listening, not moving. She was dressed in golf clothes, and I remember thinking that she looked like a good illustration, with her chin up a little pretentiously, her hair the color of autumn leaves, her face and her Light brown fingerless gloves one color over the knee.When I had finished, she told me she was engaged to another man, without saying a word.I doubted what she said, although there are several people who can marry her as long as she nods, but I pretend to be surprised.For a split second I wondered if I was making a mistake, then I thought it over quickly and got up and said goodbye. "Anyway, you dumped me," Jordan said suddenly, "you dumped me on the phone the other day. I don't take you seriously now, but it was a new experience, and I've had it for a while." Feeling dizzy." We both shook hands. "Oh, do you remember," she added, "we had a conversation about driving?" "Ah... I don't remember exactly." "You said a careless driver is only safe until he hits another careless driver? Look, I've run into another careless driver, haven't I? I mean I don't Be careful, you're so wrong. I thought you were a pretty honest, upright person. I thought that was something you were secretly proud of." "I'm thirty," I said, "and if I were five years younger, maybe I could still lie to myself and say it's fair." She didn't answer.Angry and annoyed, somewhat attached to her, and at the same time so sad, I turned and walked away. One afternoon in late October I ran into Tom Buchanan.He walked ahead of me on Fifth Avenue, still alert and domineering, with his hands slightly away from his body, as if to repel the collision, while turning his head from side to side to match his darting eyes.I was about to slow down so as not to catch up with him when he stopped, frowning, and looked into the window of a jewelry store.Suddenly he saw me, walked back, and held out his hand. "What's the matter, Nick? Won't you shake my hand?" "Right. You know what I think of you." "You're crazy, Nick," he said hastily. "Crazy enough. I don't understand what's the matter with you." "Tom," I demanded, "what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?" He stared at me without saying a word, and I knew that my guesses about those hours of ignorance had turned out to be correct.I turned and walked away, but he followed closely and took my arm. "I told him the truth," he said, "he came to my door just as we were getting ready to go out, and then I sent word that we weren't home and he wanted to rush upstairs. He was crazy enough to To the point of killing me, if I hadn't told him whose car it was. He's got his hands on a pistol in his pocket every minute when I'm home..." He stopped abruptly, hardened, "So what if I tell him? That guy wants to kill himself. He got you as he got Daisy, but he's a vicious guy. He killed Myrtle like he killed a Like a dog, it doesn't even stop the car." I have nothing to say, except this unspoken fact: it is not so. "Don't you think I didn't suffer—I tell you, when I went to vacate that apartment, I saw that hapless box of dog biscuits still on the sideboard, and I sat down and cried like a baby. I God, it hurts..." I couldn't forgive him, and I couldn't like him, but I saw that what he did was perfectly justified in his own eyes.Everything is careless and chaotic.Tom and Daisy, they were careless people - they smashed things and ruined people and then retreated into their money or insensitivity or whatever kept them together and let someone else clean them up the mess of... I shook hands with him.It would be so boring not to shake hands, because I suddenly felt as if I was talking to a child.Then he went into that jeweler's to buy a pearl necklace--or maybe just a pair of cufflinks--forever freeing me of the redneck censorship. Gatsby's house was still empty when I left - the grass on his lawn was as tall as mine.There was a taxi driver in the town who drove guests past the gate without stopping the car once and pointing inside with his hand.Perhaps he had been the one who had driven Daisy and Gatsby to East Egg the night of the accident, or perhaps he had made up an ingenious story.I don't want to listen to him, so I always avoid him when I get off the train. I spent every Saturday night in New York, because I still remember Gatsby's brightly lit and glamorous parties, and I can still hear the faint sounds of tunics and laughter wafting incessantly from his garden, and There were cars driving up and down the driveway.I did hear a real car there one night and saw its lights shining on the doorstep, but I didn't investigate.Probably the last guest, who had just returned from Tianya Haijiao, didn't know that the banquet had already ended. On the last night, after the boxes were packed and the car sold to the grocer, I went over to take another look at the big, cluttered, failed house.Some boy had bricked a dirty word on the white marble steps that stood out in the moonlight, so I wiped it off and rustled my shoes on the five ends.Later, I strolled to the beach again and lay on the beach on my back. The big beach houses were mostly closed now, and there were hardly any lights around them except the dim, moving light of a ferryboat on the bay.As the moon rose, the insignificant houses slowly faded away, until I gradually became aware of the old island that once shone so brightly to the eyes of Dutch sailors--a fresh green patch of the New World.Its vanished trees, felled to make way for Gatsby's cottage, once blew in the wind, whispering to man's last and greatest dream, in that fleeting magical moment when man faced the The New World must have held its breath in amazement, involuntarily falling into an aesthetic appreciation he neither understood nor sought, and faced for the last time in history a spectacle commensurate with his capacity for astonishment. As I sat brooding on that old, unknown world, I also thought of Gatsby's amazement when he first recognized the green light at the end of Daisy's pier.He had come a long way to come to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.He did not know that that dream was already behind him, somewhere in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in this green light, this blissful future that year by year recedes before our eyes.It eluded us before, but that's all right - tomorrow we'll run faster and stretch our arms further... someday... So we rowed forward vigorously, the small boat going up against the current, kept going backwards, and entered the past.