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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 6 - Part 1
About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.
“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.
“Why—any statement to give out.”
It transpired1 after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully2 understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”
It was a random3 shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipe-line to Canada.” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent4 story that he didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say.
James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious5 flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey6 and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the TUOLOMEE, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic7 conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious8 beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing9 days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins10 because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical11 about things which in his overwhelming self-absorbtion he took for granted.
But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque12 and fantastic conceits13 haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable14 gaudiness15 spun16 itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled17 clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness18 closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious19 embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet20 for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.
An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious21 indifference22 to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.
Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The transactions in Montana copper23 that made him many times a millionaire found him physically24 robust25 but on the verge26 of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savory27 ramifications28 by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable29 shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny at Little Girls Point.
To the young Gatz, resting on his oars30 and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour31 in the world. I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited32 the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly33 ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. And when the TUOLOMEE left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too.
He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward34, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish35 doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies36 by reposing37 more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.
I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage38 violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly39 due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne40 into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.
And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy41 of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.
He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors42 about his antecedents, which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.
It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting43 around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before.
They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously44.
“I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing45 on his porch. “I’m delighted that you dropped in.”
As though they cared!
“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. “I’ll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”
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1
transpired
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| （事实，秘密等）被人知道( transpire的过去式和过去分词 )； 泄露； 显露； 发生 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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5
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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6
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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7
platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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8
meretricious
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| adj.华而不实的，俗艳的 | |
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bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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10
virgins
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| 处女，童男( virgin的名词复数 )； 童贞玛利亚（耶稣之母） | |
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11
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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13
conceits
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| 高傲( conceit的名词复数 )； 自以为； 巧妙的词语； 别出心裁的比喻 | |
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14
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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15
gaudiness
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| n.华美，俗丽的美 | |
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16
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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17
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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18
drowsiness
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| n.睡意；嗜睡 | |
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19
oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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20
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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21
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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22
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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23
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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24
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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27
savory
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| adj.风味极佳的，可口的，味香的 | |
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28
ramifications
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| n.结果，后果( ramification的名词复数 ) | |
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29
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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30
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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31
glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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32
elicited
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| 引出，探出( elicit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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33
extravagantly
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| adv.挥霍无度地 | |
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34
steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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35
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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36
contingencies
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| n.偶然发生的事故，意外事故( contingency的名词复数 )；以备万一 | |
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37
reposing
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的现在分词 ) | |
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38
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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39
indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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40
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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41
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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42
rumors
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| n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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43
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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44
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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45
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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46
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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