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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 7 - Part 4
“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance1.
“Not at Kapiolani?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“No.”
“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 rancor5 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 sob7 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 savagely8. “She didn’t know you were alive. Why—there’re things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.”
The words seemed to bite physically9 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 any more.”
“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 Wolfsheim—that much I happen to know. I’ve made a little investigation10 into your affairs—and I’ll carry it further to-morrow.”
“I found out what your ‘drug-stores’ were.” He turned to us and spoke12 rapidly. “He and this Wolfsheim 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 stunts13. 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 lurch14, didn’t you? You let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey15. 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 Wolfsheim scared him into shutting his mouth.”
That unfamiliar16 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 babbled17 slander18 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 accusations19 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 tangible20, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
The voice begged again to go.
“PLEASE, Tom! I can’t stand this any more.”
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 presumptuous21 little flirtation22 is over.”
They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated23, like ghosts, even from our pity.
After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whiskey 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 to-day’s my birthday.”
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous24, 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 incessantly25, exulting26 and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor on the sidewalk or the tumult27 of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic28 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 wan6 face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring29 pressure of her hand.
The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint31 beside the ashheaps 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 neighbor 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 to-morrow, and then we’re going to move away.”
Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbors 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 doorway32 and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless 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, down-stairs 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 gathering33 darkness, wavered tragically34 for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn’t even sure of its color—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 mingled35 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 perspiration36, 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 at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality37 she had stored so long.
We saw the three or four automobiles38 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, wailing39 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 gasping40 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 wire 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.
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1
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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ballroom
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| n.舞厅 | |
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3
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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4
suffocating
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| a.使人窒息的 | |
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rancor
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| n.深仇，积怨 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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7
sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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8
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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9
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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10
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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11
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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12
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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13
stunts
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| n.惊人的表演( stunt的名词复数 )；（广告中）引人注目的花招；愚蠢行为；危险举动v.阻碍…发育[生长]，抑制，妨碍( stunt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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14
lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 | |
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15
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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17
babbled
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| v.喋喋不休( babble的过去式和过去分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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18
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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19
accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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20
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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21
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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flirtation
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| n.调情，调戏，挑逗 | |
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23
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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26
exulting
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| vi. 欢欣鼓舞，狂喜 | |
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27
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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28
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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29
reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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31
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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32
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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33
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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34
tragically
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| adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地 | |
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35
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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36
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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38
automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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39
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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40
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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41
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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deranged
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| adj.疯狂的 | |
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