1About 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.
2“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.
3“Why—any statement to give out.”
4It transpired 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 fully understand. 5This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”
6It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. 7Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. 8Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent 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. 9Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say.
10James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. 11He 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 insidious flat on Lake Superior. 12It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey 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.
13I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. 14His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. 15The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. 16He 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 meretricious beauty. 17So 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.
18For 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. 19His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. 20He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.
21But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. 22The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. 23A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. 24Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. 25For a while these reveries provided an outlet 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.
26An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf’s in southern Minnesota. 27He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. 28Then 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.
29Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. 30The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. 31The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism in 1902. 32He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny in Little Girl Bay.
33To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. 34I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. 35At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious. 36A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. 37And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too.
38He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. 39The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. 40It 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.
41I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. 42It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. 43Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.
44And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. 45He didn’t get it. 46He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. 47He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.
48He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren’t even faintly true. 49Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. 50So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.
51It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. 52For several weeks I didn’t see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. 53I hadn’t been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. 54I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn’t happened before.
55They 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 previously.
56“I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. 57“I’m delighted that you dropped in.”
58As though they cared!
59“Sit right down. 60Have a cigarette or a cigar.” 61He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. 62“I’ll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”
63He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. 64But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. 65Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. 66A lemonade? 67No, thanks. 68A little champagne? 69Nothing at all, thanks… I’m sorry—
70“Did you have a nice ride?”
71“Very good roads around here.”
72“I suppose the automobiles—”
73“Yeah.”
74Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.
75“I believe we’ve met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.”
76“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. 77“So we did. 78I remember very well.”
79“About two weeks ago.”
80“That’s right. 81You were with Nick here.”
82“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.
83“That so?”
84Tom turned to me.
85“You live near here, Nick?”
86“Next door.”
87“That so?”
88Mr. Sloane didn’t enter into the conversation, but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.
89“We’ll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested. 90“What do you say?”
91“Certainly; I’d be delighted to have you.”
92“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. 93“Well—think ought to be starting home.”
94“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. 95He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. 96“Why don’t you—why don’t you stay for supper? 97I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.”
98“You come to supper with me,” said the lady enthusiastically. 99“Both of you.”
100This included me. 101Mr. Sloane got to his feet.
102“Come along,” he said—but to her only.
103“I mean it,” she insisted. 104“I’d love to have you. 105Lots of room.”
106Gatsby looked at me questioningly. 107He wanted to go and he didn’t see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn’t.
108“I’m afraid I won’t be able to,” I said.
109“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.
110Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.
111“We won’t be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud.
112“I haven’t got a horse,” said Gatsby. 113“I used to ride in the army, but I’ve never bought a horse. 114I’ll have to follow you in my car. 115Excuse me for just a minute.”
116The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside.
117“My God, I believe the man’s coming,” said Tom. 118“Doesn’t he know she doesn’t want him?”
119“She says she does want him.”
120“She has a big dinner party and he won’t know a soul there.” 121He frowned. 122“I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. 123By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. 124They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”
125Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.
126“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we’re late. 127We’ve got to go.” 128And then to me: “Tell him we couldn’t wait, will you?”
129Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the front door.
130Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy’s running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby’s party. 131Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby’s other parties that summer. 132There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn’t been there before. 133Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. 134It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.
135They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling hundreds, Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
136“These things excite me so,” she whispered. 137“If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad to arrange it for you. 138Just mention my name. 139Or present a green card. 140I’m giving out green—”
141“Look around,” suggested Gatsby.
142“I’m looking around. 143I’m having a marvellous—”
144“You must see the faces of many people you’ve heard about.”
145Tom’s arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.
146“We don’t go around very much,” he said; “in fact, I was just thinking I don’t know a soul here.”
147“Perhaps you know that lady.” 148Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-plum tree. 149Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.
150“She’s lovely,” said Daisy.
151“The man bending over her is her director.”
152He took them ceremoniously from group to group:
153“Mrs. Buchanan… and Mr. Buchanan—” After an instant’s hesitation he added: “the polo player.”
154“Oh no,” objected Tom quickly, “not me.”
155But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained “the polo player” for the rest of the evening.
156“I’ve never met so many celebrities,” Daisy exclaimed. 157“I liked that man—what was his name?—with the sort of blue nose.”
158Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.
159“Well, I liked him anyhow.”
160“I’d a little rather not be the polo player,” said Tom pleasantly, “I’d rather look at all these famous people in—in oblivion.”
161Daisy and Gatsby danced. 162I remember being surprised by his graceful, conservative foxtrot—I had never seen him dance before. 163Then they sauntered over to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour, while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden. 164“In case there’s a fire or a flood,” she explained, “or any act of God.”
165Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together. 166“Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?” he said. 167“A fellow’s getting off some funny stuff.”
168“Go ahead,” answered Daisy genially, “and if you want to take down any addresses here’s my little gold pencil.” 169… She looked around after a moment and told me the girl was “common but pretty,” and I knew that except for the half-hour she’d been alone with Gatsby she wasn’t having a good time.
170We were at a particularly tipsy table. 171That was my fault—Gatsby had been called to the phone, and I’d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. 172But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.
173“How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?”
174The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. 175At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.
176“Wha’?”
177A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence:
178“Oh, she’s all right now. 179When she’s had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. 180I tell her she ought to leave it alone.”
181“I do leave it alone,” affirmed the accused hollowly.
182“We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody that needs your help, Doc.’ ”
183“She’s much obliged, I’m sure,” said another friend, without gratitude, “but you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.”
184“Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,” mumbled Miss Baedeker. 185“They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.”
186“Then you ought to leave it alone,” countered Doctor Civet.
187“Speak for yourself!” 188cried Miss Baedeker violently. 189“Your hand shakes. 190I wouldn’t let you operate on me!”
191It was like that. 192Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. 193They were still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. 194It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek.
195“I like her,” said Daisy, “I think she’s lovely.”
196But the rest offended her—and inarguably because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. 197She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place” that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. 198She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
199I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. 200It was dark here in front; only the bright door sent ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning. 201Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressing-room blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an invisible glass.
202“Who is this Gatsby anyhow?” demanded Tom suddenly. 203“Some big bootlegger?”
204“Where’d you hear that?” 205I inquired.
206“I didn’t hear it. 207I imagined it. 208A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.”
209“Not Gatsby,” I said shortly.
210He was silent for a moment. 211The pebbles of the drive crunched under his feet.
212“Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie together.”
213A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy’s fur collar.
214“At least they are more interesting than the people we know,” she said with an effort.
215“You didn’t look so interested.”
216“Well, I was.”
217Tom laughed and turned to me.
218“Did you notice Daisy’s face when that girl asked her to put her under a cold shower?”
219Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. 220When the melody rose her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.
221“Lots of people come who haven’t been invited,” she said suddenly. 222“That girl hadn’t been invited. 223They simply force their way in and he’s too polite to object.”
224“I’d like to know who he is and what he does,” insisted Tom. 225“And I think I’ll make a point of finding out.”
226“I can tell you right now,” she answered. 227“He owned some drugstores, a lot of drugstores. 228He built them up himself.”
229The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.
230“Good night, Nick,” said Daisy.
231Her glance left me and sought the lighted top of the steps, where “Three O’Clock in the Morning,” a neat, sad little waltz of that year, was drifting out the open door. 232After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby’s party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world. 233What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? 234What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours? 235Perhaps some unbelievable guest would arrive, a person infinitely rare and to be marvelled at, some authentically radiant young girl who with one fresh glance at Gatsby, one moment of magical encounter, would blot out those five years of unwavering devotion.
236I stayed late that night. 237Gatsby asked me to wait until he was free, and I lingered in the garden until the inevitable swimming party had run up, chilled and exalted, from the black beach, until the lights were extinguished in the guestrooms overhead. 238When he came down the steps at last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes were bright and tired.
239“She didn’t like it,” he said immediately.
240“Of course she did.”
241“She didn’t like it,” he insisted. 242“She didn’t have a good time.”
243He was silent, and I guessed at his unutterable depression.
244“I feel far away from her,” he said. 245“It’s hard to make her understand.”
246“You mean about the dance?”
247“The dance?” 248He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. 249“Old sport, the dance is unimportant.”
250He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” 251After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. 252One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.
253“And she doesn’t understand,” he said. 254“She used to be able to understand. 255We’d sit for hours—”
256He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers.
257“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. 258“You can’t repeat the past.”
259“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. 260“Why of course you can!”
261He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
262“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. 263“She’ll see.”
264He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. 265His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…
266… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. 267They stopped here and turned toward each other. 268Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. 269The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. 270Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
271His heart beat faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. 272He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. 273So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. 274Then he kissed her. 275At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
276Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. 277For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. 278But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.