\r\n\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m the Sheik of Araby.\r\nYour love belongs to me.\r\nAt night when you\u2019re asleep\r\nInto your tent I\u2019ll creep\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n\u201cIt was a strange coincidence,\u201d I said.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut it wasn\u2019t a coincidence at all.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe wants to know,\u201d continued Jordan, \u201cif you\u2019ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths\u2014so that he could \u201ccome over\u201d some afternoon to a stranger\u2019s garden.\r\n\r\n\u201cDid I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe\u2019s afraid, he\u2019s waited so long. He thought you might be offended. You see, he\u2019s regular tough underneath it all.\u201d\r\n\r\nSomething worried me.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he ask you to arrange a meeting?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe wants her to see his house,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd your house is right next door.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,\u201d went on Jordan, \u201cbut she never did. Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a luncheon in New York\u2014and I thought he\u2019d go mad:\r\n\r\n\u201c\u200a\u2018I don\u2019t want to do anything out of the way!\u2019 he kept saying. \u2018I want to see her right next door.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen I said you were a particular friend of Tom\u2019s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn\u2019t know very much about Tom, though he says he\u2019s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy\u2019s name.\u201d\r\n\r\nIt was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan\u2019s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn\u2019t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: \u201cThere are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd Daisy ought to have something in her life,\u201d murmured Jordan to me.\r\n\r\n\u201cDoes she want to see Gatsby?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cShe\u2019s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn\u2019t want her to know. You\u2019re just supposed to invite her to tea.\u201d\r\n\r\nWe passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the fa\u00e7ade of Fifty-Ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.","rendered":"On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby\u2019s house and twinkled hilariously on his lawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a bootlegger,\u201d said the young ladies, moving somewhere between his cocktails and his flowers. \u201cOne time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once I wrote down on the empty spaces of a timetable the names of those who came to Gatsby\u2019s house that summer. It is an old timetable now, disintegrating at its folds, and headed \u201cThis schedule in effect July 5th, 1922.\u201d But I can still read the grey names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby\u2019s hospitality and paid him the subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him.<\/p>\n
From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near. And the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr. Chrystie\u2019s wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair, they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all.<\/p>\n
Clarence Endive was from East Egg, as I remember. He came only once, in white knickerbockers, and had a fight with a bum named Etty in the garden. From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he went to the penitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett\u2019s automobile ran over his right hand. The Dancies came, too, and S. B. Whitebait, who was well over sixty, and Maurice A. Flink, and the Hammerheads, and Beluga the tobacco importer, and Beluga\u2019s girls.<\/p>\n
From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Cecil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who controlled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartz (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G. Earl Muldoon, brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. (\u201cRot-Gut\u201d) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly\u2014they came to gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably next day.<\/p>\n
A man named Klipspringer was there so often that he became known as \u201cthe boarder\u201d\u2014I doubt if he had any other home. Of theatrical people there were Gus Waize and Horace O\u2019Donavan and Lester Myer and George Duckweed and Francis Bull. Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backhyssons and the Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S. W. Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns, divorced now, and Henry L. Palmetto, who killed himself by jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.<\/p>\n
Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have forgotten their names\u2014Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela, or Gloria or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be.<\/p>\n
In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O\u2019Brien came there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war, and Mr. Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his fianc\u00e9e, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr. P. Jewett, once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be her chauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten.<\/p>\n
All these people came to Gatsby\u2019s house in the summer.<\/p>\n
\nAt nine o\u2019clock, one morning late in July, Gatsby\u2019s gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door and gave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn.<\/p>\n
It was the first time he had called on me, though I had gone to two of his parties, mounted in his hydroplane, and, at his urgent invitation, made frequent use of his beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning, old sport. You\u2019re having lunch with me today and I thought we\u2019d ride up together.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American\u2014that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness. He was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.<\/p>\n
He saw me looking with admiration at his car.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty, isn\u2019t it, old sport?\u201d He jumped off to give me a better view. \u201cHaven\u2019t you ever seen it before?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream colour, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and toolboxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town.<\/p>\n
I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and found, to my disappointment, that he had little to say. So my first impression, that he was a person of some undefined consequence, had gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate roadhouse next door.<\/p>\n
And then came that disconcerting ride. We hadn\u2019t reached West Egg village before Gatsby began leaving his elegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-coloured suit.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook here, old sport,\u201d he broke out surprisingly, \u201cwhat\u2019s your opinion of me, anyhow?\u201d<\/p>\n
A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019m going to tell you something about my life,\u201d he interrupted. \u201cI don\u2019t want you to get a wrong idea of me from all these stories you hear.\u201d<\/p>\n
So he was aware of the bizarre accusations that flavoured conversation in his halls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you God\u2019s truth.\u201d His right hand suddenly ordered divine retribution to stand by. \u201cI am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West\u2014all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me sideways\u2014and I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying. He hurried the phrase \u201ceducated at Oxford,\u201d or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him before. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn\u2019t something a little sinister about him, after all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat part of the Middle West?\u201d I inquired casually.<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family all died and I came into a good deal of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
His voice was solemn, as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe\u2014Paris, Venice, Rome\u2014collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned \u201ccharacter\u201d leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life. I accepted a commission as first lieutenant when it began. In the Argonne Forest I took the remains of my machine-gun battalion so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn\u2019t advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead. I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration\u2014even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!\u201d<\/p>\n
Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them\u2014with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro\u2019s troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro\u2019s warm little heart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines.<\/p>\n
He reached in his pocket, and a piece of metal, slung on a ribbon, fell into my palm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the one from Montenegro.\u201d<\/p>\n
To my astonishment, the thing had an authentic look. \u201cOrderi di Danilo,\u201d ran the circular legend, \u201cMontenegro, Nicolas Rex.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTurn it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMajor Jay Gatsby,\u201d I read, \u201cFor Valour Extraordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s another thing I always carry. A souvenir of Oxford days. It was taken in Trinity Quad\u2014the man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby, looking a little, not much, younger\u2014with a cricket bat in his hand.<\/p>\n
Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to make a big request of you today,\u201d he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, \u201cso I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn\u2019t want you to think I was just some nobody. You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.\u201d He hesitated. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear about it this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt lunch?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, this afternoon. I happened to find out that you\u2019re taking Miss Baker to tea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you mean you\u2019re in love with Miss Baker?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, old sport, I\u2019m not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you about this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t the faintest idea what \u201cthis matter\u201d was, but I was more annoyed than interested. I hadn\u2019t asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss Mr. Jay Gatsby. I was sure the request would be something utterly fantastic, and for a moment I was sorry I\u2019d ever set foot upon his overpopulated lawn.<\/p>\n
He wouldn\u2019t say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted oceangoing ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.<\/p>\n
With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria\u2014only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar \u201cjug-jug-spat<\/i>!\u201d of a motorcycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right, old sport,\u201d called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight you are,\u201d agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. \u201cKnow you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was that?\u201d I inquired. \u201cThe picture of Oxford?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to do the commissioner a favour once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of nonolfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.<\/p>\n
A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of southeastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby\u2019s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we crossed Blackwell\u2019s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything can happen now that we\u2019ve slid over this bridge,\u201d I thought; \u201canything at all\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.<\/p>\n
\nRoaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside, my eyes picked him out obscurely in the anteroom, talking to another man.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.\u201d<\/p>\n
A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2014So I took one look at him,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, \u201cand what do you think I did?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d I inquired politely.<\/p>\n
But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: \u2018All right, Katspaugh, don\u2019t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.\u2019 He shut it then and there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.<\/p>\n
\u201cHighballs?\u201d asked the head waiter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a nice restaurant here,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. \u201cBut I like across the street better!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, highballs,\u201d agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: \u201cIt\u2019s too hot over there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHot and small\u2014yes,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, \u201cbut full of memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat place is that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe old Metropole.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe old Metropole,\u201d brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. \u201cFilled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can\u2019t forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. \u2018All right,\u2019 says Rosy, and begins to get up, and I pulled him down in his chair.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a\u2018Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don\u2019t you, so help me, move outside this room.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was four o\u2019clock in the morning then, and if we\u2019d of raised the blinds we\u2019d of seen daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid he go?\u201d I asked innocently.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure he went.\u201d Mr. Wolfshiem\u2019s nose flashed at me indignantly. \u201cHe turned around in the door and says: \u2018Don\u2019t let that waiter take away my coffee!\u2019 Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFour of them were electrocuted,\u201d I said, remembering.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive, with Becker.\u201d His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. \u201cI understand you\u2019re looking for a business gonnegtion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me:<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, no,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cthis isn\u2019t the man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo?\u201d Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just a friend. I told you we\u2019d talk about that some other time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, \u201cI had a wrong man.\u201d<\/p>\n
A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room\u2014he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook here, old sport,\u201d said Gatsby, leaning toward me, \u201cI\u2019m afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like mysteries,\u201d I answered, \u201cand I don\u2019t understand why you won\u2019t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, it\u2019s nothing underhand,\u201d he assured me. \u201cMiss Baker\u2019s a great sportswoman, you know, and she\u2019d never do anything that wasn\u2019t all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room, leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has to telephone,\u201d said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes. \u201cFine fellow, isn\u2019t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an Oggsford man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of the most famous colleges in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you known Gatsby for a long time?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral years,\u201d he answered in a gratified way. \u201cI made the pleasure of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself: \u2018There\u2019s the kind of man you\u2019d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.\u2019\u200a\u201d He paused. \u201cI see you\u2019re looking at my cuff buttons.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinest specimens of human molars,\u201d he informed me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell!\u201d I inspected them. \u201cThat\u2019s a very interesting idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. \u201cYeah, Gatsby\u2019s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend\u2019s wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have enjoyed my lunch,\u201d he said, \u201cand I\u2019m going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t hurry Meyer,\u201d said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re very polite, but I belong to another generation,\u201d he announced solemnly. \u201cYou sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your\u2014\u201d He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. \u201cAs for me, I am fifty years old, and I won\u2019t impose myself on you any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe becomes very sentimental sometimes,\u201d explained Gatsby. \u201cThis is one of his sentimental days. He\u2019s quite a character around New York\u2014a denizen of Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is he, anyhow, an actor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA dentist?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMeyer Wolfshiem? No, he\u2019s a gambler.\u201d Gatsby hesitated, then added, coolly: \u201cHe\u2019s the man who fixed the World\u2019s Series back in 1919.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFixed the World\u2019s Series?\u201d I repeated.<\/p>\n
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World\u2019s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened<\/i>, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people\u2014with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did he happen to do that?\u201d I asked after a minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just saw the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy isn\u2019t he in jail?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can\u2019t get him, old sport. He\u2019s a smart man.\u201d<\/p>\n
I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome along with me for a minute,\u201d I said; \u201cI\u2019ve got to say hello to someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019ve you been?\u201d he demanded eagerly. \u201cDaisy\u2019s furious because you haven\u2019t called up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.\u201d<\/p>\n
They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019ve you been, anyhow?\u201d demanded Tom of me. \u201cHow\u2019d you happen to come up this far to eat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.<\/p>\n
\nOne October day in nineteen-seventeen\u2014<\/p>\n
(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)<\/p>\n
\u2014I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber knobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut-tut<\/i>, in a disapproving way.<\/p>\n
The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay\u2019s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. \u201cAnyways, for an hour!\u201d<\/p>\n
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the kerb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn\u2019t see me until I was five feet away.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello, Jordan,\u201d she called unexpectedly. \u201cPlease come here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross to make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn\u2019t come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn\u2019t lay eyes on him again for over four years\u2014even after I\u2019d met him on Long Island I didn\u2019t realize it was the same man.<\/p>\n
That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn\u2019t see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd\u2014when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumours were circulating about her\u2014how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn\u2019t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didn\u2019t play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, shortsighted young men in town, who couldn\u2019t get into the army at all.<\/p>\n
By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a d\u00e9but after the armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Muhlbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.<\/p>\n
I was a bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress\u2014and as drunk as a monkey. She had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a\u2019Gratulate me,\u201d she muttered. \u201cNever had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Daisy?\u201d<\/p>\n
I was scared, I can tell you; I\u2019d never seen a girl like that before.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, dearies.\u201d She groped around in a wastebasket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. \u201cTake \u2019em downstairs and give \u2019em back to whoever they belong to. Tell \u2019em all Daisy\u2019s change\u2019 her mine. Say: \u2018Daisy\u2019s change\u2019 her mine!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n
She began to cry\u2014she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother\u2019s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn\u2019t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up in a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.<\/p>\n
But she didn\u2019t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o\u2019clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months\u2019 trip to the South Seas.<\/p>\n
I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I\u2019d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she\u2019d look around uneasily, and say: \u201cWhere\u2019s Tom gone?\u201d and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together\u2014it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken\u2014she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.<\/p>\n
The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn\u2019t drink. It\u2019s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don\u2019t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all\u2014and yet there\u2019s something in that voice of hers\u2026<\/p>\n
Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you\u2014do you remember?\u2014if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: \u201cWhat Gatsby?\u201d and when I described him\u2014I was half asleep\u2014she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn\u2019t until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.<\/p>\n
\nWhen Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park. The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear voices of children, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:<\/p>\n
\n\n\u201cI\u2019m the Sheik of Araby.
\nYour love belongs to me.
\nAt night when you\u2019re asleep
\nInto your tent I\u2019ll creep\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cIt was a strange coincidence,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it wasn\u2019t a coincidence at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to know,\u201d continued Jordan, \u201cif you\u2019ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths\u2014so that he could \u201ccome over\u201d some afternoon to a stranger\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s afraid, he\u2019s waited so long. He thought you might be offended. You see, he\u2019s regular tough underneath it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something worried me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he ask you to arrange a meeting?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants her to see his house,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd your house is right next door.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,\u201d went on Jordan, \u201cbut she never did. Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a luncheon in New York\u2014and I thought he\u2019d go mad:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200a\u2018I don\u2019t want to do anything out of the way!\u2019 he kept saying. \u2018I want to see her right next door.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I said you were a particular friend of Tom\u2019s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn\u2019t know very much about Tom, though he says he\u2019s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan\u2019s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn\u2019t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: \u201cThere are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Daisy ought to have something in her life,\u201d murmured Jordan to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes she want to see Gatsby?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn\u2019t want her to know. You\u2019re just supposed to invite her to tea.\u201d<\/p>\n
We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the fa\u00e7ade of Fifty-Ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":5,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-37","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/revisions\/81"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/37\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thegreatgatsby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}