«Великий Гэтсби» и другие лучшие произведения Ф.С. Фицджеральда

‘You’re revolting,’ said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: ‘Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.’

Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.

‘Daisy, that’s all over now,’ he said earnestly. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore. Just tell him the truth – that you never loved him – and it’s all wiped out forever.’

She looked at him blindly. ‘Why – how could I love him – possibly?’

‘You never loved him.’

She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing – and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.

‘I never loved him,’ she said, with perceptible reluctance.

‘Not at Kapiolani[91]?’ demanded Tom suddenly.

‘No.’

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.

‘Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?’ There was a husky tenderness in his tone… ‘Daisy?’

‘Please don’t.’ Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. ‘There, Jay,’ she said – but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.

‘Oh, you want too much!’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now – isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once – but I loved you too.’

Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.

‘You loved me too?’ he repeated.

‘Even that’s a lie,’ said Tom savagely. ‘She didn’t know you were alive. Why – there’s things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.’

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

‘I want to speak to Daisy alone,’ he insisted. ‘She’s all excited now – ’

‘Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,’ she admitted in a pitiful voice. ‘It wouldn’t be true.’

‘Of course it wouldn’t,’ agreed Tom.

She turned to her husband.

‘As if it mattered to you,’ she said.

‘Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now on.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. ‘You’re not going to take care of her anymore.’

‘I’m not?’ Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Daisy’s leaving you.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘I am, though,’ she said with a visible effort.

‘She’s not leaving me!’ Tom’s words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. ‘Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.’

‘I won’t stand this!’ cried Daisy. ‘Oh, please let’s get out.’

‘Who are you, anyhow?’ broke out Tom. ‘You’re one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem – that much I happen to know. I’ve made a little investigation into your affairs – and I’ll carry it further tomorrow.’

‘You can suit yourself about that, old sport.’ said Gatsby steadily.

‘I found out what your “drug-stores” were.’ He turned to us and spoke rapidly. ‘He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That’s one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn’t far wrong.’

‘What about it?’ said Gatsby politely. ‘I guess your friend Walter Chase wasn’t too proud to come in on it.’

‘And you left him in the lurch, didn’t you? You let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject of you.’

‘He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport.’

‘Don’t you call me “old sport”!’ cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing. ‘Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.’

That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby’s face.

‘That drug-store business was just small change,’ continued Tom slowly, ‘but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s afraid to tell me about.’

I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby – and was startled at his expression. He looked – and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden – as if he had ‘killed a man’. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.

It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.

The voice begged again to go.

‘Please, Tom! I can’t stand this anymore.’

Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone.

‘You two start on home, Daisy,’ said Tom. ‘In Mr. Gatsby’s car.’

She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.

‘Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.’

They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.

After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whisky in the towel.

‘Want any of this stuff? Jordan?… Nick?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Nick?’ He asked again.

‘What?’

‘Want any?’

‘No… I just remembered that today’s my birthday.’

I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.

The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the ash-heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office – really sick, pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he’d miss a lot of business if he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent racket broke out overhead.

‘I’ve got my wife locked in up there,’ explained Wilson calmly. ‘She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we’re going to move away.’

Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement. Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn’t working, he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife’s man and not his own.

So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson wouldn’t say a word – instead he began to throw curious, suspicious glances at his visitor and ask him what he’d been doing at certain times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he didn’t. He supposed he forgot to, that’s all. When he came outside again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation because he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.

‘Beat me!’ he heard her cry. ‘Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!’

A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting – before he could move from his door the business was over.

The ‘death car’ as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasn’t even sure of its colour – he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust.

Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.

We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still some distance away.

‘Wreck!’ said Tom. ‘That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at last.’

He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage door made him automatically put on the brakes.

‘We’ll take a look,’ he said doubtfully, ‘just a look.’

I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupe and walked toward the door resolved itself into the words ‘Oh, my God!’ uttered over and over in a gasping moan.

‘There’s some bad trouble here,’ said Tom excitedly.

He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way through.

The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.

Myrtle Wilson’s body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on a work-table by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motor-cycle policeman taking down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I couldn’t find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed clamorously through the bare garage – then I saw Wilson standing on the raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand on his shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly his high, horrible call:

‘Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!’

Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to the policeman.

‘M-a-v – ’ the policeman was saying, ‘ – o —’

‘No, r – ’ corrected the man, ‘M-a-v-r-o —’

‘Listen to me!’ muttered Tom fiercely.

‘r —’ said the policeman, ‘o —’

‘g —’ He looked up as Tom’s broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder. ‘What you want, fella?’

‘What happened? – that’s what I want to know.’

‘Auto hit her. Ins’antly killed.’

‘Instantly killed,’ repeated Tom, staring.

‘She ran out in a road. Son-of-a-bitch didn’t even stopus car.’

‘There was two cars,’ said Michaelis, ‘one comin’, one goin’, see?’

‘Going where?’ asked the policeman keenly.

‘One goin’ each way. Well, she’ – his hand rose toward the blankets but stopped half way and fell to his side – ‘she ran out there an’ the one comin’ from N’York knock right into her, goin’ thirty or forty miles an hour.’

‘What’s the name of this place here’?’ demanded the officer.

‘Hasn’t got any name.’

A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.

‘It was a yellow car,’ he said, ‘big yellow car. New.’

‘See the accident?’ asked the policeman.

‘No, but the car passed me down the road, going faster’n forty. Going fifty, sixty.’

‘Come here and let’s have your name. Look out now. I want to get his name.’

Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson, swaying in the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among his gasping cries:

‘You don’t have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of car it was!’

Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and, standing in front of him seized him, firmly by the upper arms.

‘You’ve got to pull yourself together,’ he said with soothing gruffness.

Wilson’s eyes fell upon Tom; he started up on his tiptoes and then would have collapsed to his knees had not Tom held him upright.

‘Listen,’ said Tom, shaking him a little. ‘I just got here a minute ago, from New York. I was bringing you that coupe we’ve been talking about. That yellow car I was driving this afternoon wasn’t mine – do you hear? I haven’t seen it all afternoon.’

Only the negro and I were near enough to hear what he said, but the policeman caught something in the tone and looked over with truculent eyes.

‘What’s all that?’ he demanded.

‘I’m a friend of his.’ Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on Wilson’s body. ‘He says he knows the car that did it… It was a yellow car.’

Some dim impulse moved the policeman to look suspiciously at Tom.

‘And what colour’s your car?’

‘It’s a blue car, a coupe.’

‘We’ve come straight from New York,’ I said.

Someone who had been driving a little behind us confirmed this, and the policeman turned away.

‘Now, if you’ll let me have that name again correct – ’ Picking up Wilson like a doll, Tom carried him into the office, set him down in a chair, and came back.

‘If somebody’ll come here and sit with him,’ he snapped authoritatively. He watched while the two men standing closest glanced at each other and went unwillingly into the room. Then Tom shut the door on them and came down the single step, his eyes avoiding the table. As he passed close to me he whispered: ‘Let’s get out.’

Self-consciously, with his authoritative arms breaking the way, we pushed through the still gathering crowd, passing a hurried doctor, case in hand, who had been sent for in wild hope half an hour ago.

Tom drove slowly until we were beyond the bend – then his foot came down hard, and the coupe raced along through the night. In a little while I heard a low husky sob, and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face.

‘The God damned coward!’ he whimpered. ‘He didn’t even stop his car.’

The Buchanans’ house floated suddenly toward us through the dark rustling trees. Tom stopped beside the porch and looked up at the second floor, where two windows bloomed with light among the vines.

‘Daisy’s home,’ he said. As we got out of the car he glanced at me and frowned slightly.

‘I ought to have dropped you in West Egg, Nick. There’s nothing we can do tonight.’

A change had come over him, and he spoke gravely, and with decision. As we walked across the moonlight gravel to the porch he disposed of the situation in a few brisk phrases.

‘I’ll telephone for a taxi to take you home, and while you’re waiting you and Jordan better go in the kitchen and have them get you some supper – if you want any.’ He opened the door. ‘Come in.’

‘No, thanks. But I’d be glad if you’d order me the taxi. I’ll wait outside.’

Jordan put her hand on my arm.

‘Won’t you come in, Nick?’

‘No, thanks.’

I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to be alone. But Jordan lingered for a moment more.

‘It’s only half-past nine,’ she said.

I’d be damned if I’d go in; I’d had enough of all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too. She must have seen something of this in my expression, for she turned abruptly away and ran up the porch steps into the house. I sat down for a few minutes with my head in my hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s voice calling a taxi. Then I walked slowly down the drive away from the house, intending to wait by the gate.

I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon.

‘What are you doing?’ I inquired.

‘Just standing here, old sport.’

Somehow, that seemed a despicable occupation. For all I knew he was going to rob the house in a moment; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see sinister faces, the faces of ‘Wolfshiem’s people’, behind him in the dark shrubbery.

‘Did you see any trouble on the road?’ he asked after a minute.

‘Yes.’

He hesitated.

‘Was she killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It’s better that the shock should all come at once. She stood it pretty well.’

He spoke as if Daisy’s reaction was the only thing that mattered.

‘I got to West Egg by a side road,’ he went on, ‘and left the car in my garage. I don’t think anybody saw us, but of course I can’t be sure.’

I disliked him so much by this time that I didn’t find it necessary to tell him he was wrong.

‘Who was the woman?’ he inquired.

‘Her name was Wilson. Her husband owns the garage. How the devil did it happen?’

‘Well, I tried to swing the wheel – ’ He broke off, and suddenly I guessed at the truth.

‘Was Daisy driving?’

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, ‘but of course I’ll say I was. You see, when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would steady her to drive – and this woman rushed out at us just as we were passing a car coming the other way. It all happened in a minute, but it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew. Well, first Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back. The second my hand reached the wheel I felt the shock – it must have killed her instantly.’

‘It ripped her open —’

‘Don’t tell me, old sport.’ He winced. ‘Anyhow – Daisy stepped on it. I tried to make her stop, but she couldn’t, so I pulled on the emergency brake. Then she fell over into my lap and I drove on.

‘She’ll be all right tomorrow,’ he said presently. ‘I’m just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon. She’s locked herself into her room, and if he tries any brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on again.’

‘He won’t touch her,’ I said. ‘He’s not thinking about her.’

‘I don’t trust him, old sport.’

‘How long are you going to wait?’

‘All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed.’

A new point of view occurred to me. Suppose Tom found out that Daisy had been driving. He might think he saw a connection in it – he might think anything. I looked at the house; there were two or three bright windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the second floor.

‘You wait here,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if there’s any sign of a commotion.’

I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly, and tiptoed up the veranda steps. The drawing-room curtains were open, and I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale – and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.

As I tiptoed from the porch I heard my taxi feeling its way along the dark road toward the house. Gatsby was waiting where I had left him in the drive.

‘Is it all quiet up there?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Yes, it’s all quiet.’ I hesitated. ‘You’d better come home and get some sleep.’

He shook his head.

‘I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night, old sport.’

He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing.