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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 8 - Part 3
“Twelve years.”
“Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a question. Did you ever have any children?”
The hard brown beetles1 kept thudding against the dull light, and whenever Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it sounded to him like the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours before. He didn’t like to go into the garage, because the work bench was stained where the body had been lying, so he moved uncomfortably around the office—he knew every object in it before morning—and from time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him more quiet.
“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?”
“Don’t belong to any.”
“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen, George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?”
“That was a long time ago.”
The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking—for a moment he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came back into his faded eyes.
“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at the desk.
“Which drawer?”
“That drawer—that one.”
Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but a small, expensive dog-leash2, made of leather and braided silver. It was apparently3 new.
“This?” he inquired, holding it up.
Wilson stared and nodded.
“I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I knew it was something funny.”
“You mean your wife bought it?”
“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.”
Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. But conceivably Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle, because he began saying “Oh, my God!” again in a whisper—his comforter left several explanations in the air.
“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.
“Who did?”
“I have a way of finding out.”
“You’re morbid4, George,” said his friend. “This has been a strain to you and you don’t know what you’re saying. You’d better try and sit quiet till morning.”
“He murdered her.”
“It was an accident, George.”
Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior “Hm!”
“I know,” he said definitely, “I’m one of these trusting fellas and I don’t think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn’t stop.”
Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred to him that there was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any particular car.
“How could she of been like that?”
“She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that answered the question. “Ah-h-h——”
He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand.
“Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?”
This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend: there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later when he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light.
Wilson’s glazed5 eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried6 here and there in the faint dawn wind.
“I spoke7 to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window.”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it——” and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’”
Standing8 behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.
“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.
“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane9, nodding into the twilight10.
By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before who had promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for three, which he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now, and Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.
His movements—he was on foot all the time—were afterward11 traced to Port Roosevelt and then to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that he didn’t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting12 for his time—there were boys who had seen a man “acting sort of crazy,” and motorists at whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared from view. The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis, that he “had a way of finding out,” supposed that he spent that time going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow car. On the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward, and perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name.
At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if any one phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress13 that had amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur14 helped him pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn’t to be taken out under any circumstances—and this was strange, because the front right fender needed repair.
Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing trees.
No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar15 sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque16 thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen17, fantastic figure gliding18 toward him through the amorphous19 trees.
The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfsheim’s proteges—heard the shots—afterward he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed any one. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I, hurried down to the pool.
There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. with little ripples20 that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden21 mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust22 of wind that scarcely corrugated23 the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved24 it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water.
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1
beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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2
leash
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| n.牵狗的皮带，束缚；v.用皮带系住 | |
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3
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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4
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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5
glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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6
scurried
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
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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8
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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pane
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| n.窗格玻璃，长方块 | |
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10
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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11
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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13
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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14
chauffeur
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| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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15
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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16
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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17
ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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18
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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19
amorphous
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| adj.无定形的 | |
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20
ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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22
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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23
corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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24
revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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holocaust
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| n.大破坏；大屠杀 | |
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