The Great Gatsby 6

 

THE GREAT GATSBY

 

PART 6

 

 

Chapter 6

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 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. This was his day off

and with laudable initiative he had hurried out "to see."

It was a random 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 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. 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 insidious flat on Lake Superior. It 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 row-boat, 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 Platonic

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 meretricious 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 bracing days.

He 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.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque

and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe

of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the

clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet

light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the

pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid

scene with an oblivious embrace. For 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.

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 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. 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 along shore.

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 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. The none too savory 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 knowledge to the turgid journalism

of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five

years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny at Little Girl Bay.

To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed

deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor 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 elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick, and

extravagantly 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 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. 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 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. It was indirectly due to

Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties

women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the

habit of letting liquor alone.

And it was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy 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 rumors 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, trotting 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 previously.

"I'm delighted to see you," said Gatsby standing 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."

He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be

uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague

way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A

lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all,

thanks. . . . I'm sorry----

"Did you have a nice ride?"

"Very good roads around here."

"I suppose the automobiles----"

"Yeah."

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom who had accepted

the introduction as a stranger.

"I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan."

"Oh, yes," said Tom, gruffly polite but obviously not remembering.

"So we did. I remember very well."

"About two weeks ago."

"That's right. You were with Nick here."

"I know your wife," continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.

"That so?"

Tom turned to me.

"You live near here, Nick?"

"Next door."

"That so?"

Mr. 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.

"We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby," she suggested.

"What do you say?"

"Certainly. I'd be delighted to have you."

"Be ver' nice," said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. "Well--think ought to

be starting home."

"Please don't hurry," Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now

and he wanted to see more of Tom. "Why don't you--why don't you stay for

supper? I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from

New York."

"You come to supper with ME," said the lady enthusiastically.

"Both of you."

This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.

"Come along," he said--but to her only.

"I mean it," she insisted. "I'd love to have you. Lots of room."

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn't see

that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to," I said.

"Well, you come," she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.

"We won't be late if we start now," she insisted aloud.

"I haven't got a horse," said Gatsby. "I used to ride in the army but

I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me

for just a minute."

The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began

an impassioned conversation aside.

"My God, I believe the man's coming," said Tom. "Doesn't he know she

doesn't want him?"

"She says she does want him."

"She has a big dinner party and he won't know a soul there." He frowned.

"I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be

old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to

suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish."

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted

their horses.

"Come on," said Mr. Sloane to Tom, "we're late. We've got to go." And then

to me: "Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?"

Tom 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.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the

following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps

his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness--it

stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There

were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same

profusion of champagne, the same many-colored, many-keyed commotion,

but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that

hadn't been there before. Or 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. It is invariably saddening to look through new

eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of

adjustment.

They arrived at twilight and as we strolled out among the sparkling

hundreds Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.

"These things excite me SO," she whispered. "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. Just mention my name. Or present a green card.

I'm giving out green----"

"Look around," suggested Gatsby.

"I'm looking around. I'm having a marvelous----"

"You must see the faces of many people you've heard about."

Tom's arrogant eyes roamed the crowd.

"We don't go around very much," he said. "In fact I was just thinking

I don't know a soul here."

"Perhaps you know that lady." Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human

orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy

stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies the

recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies.

"She's lovely," said Daisy.

"The man bending over her is her director."

He took them ceremoniously from group to group:

"Mrs. Buchanan . . . and Mr. Buchanan----" After an instant's hesitation

he added: "the polo player."

"Oh no," objected Tom quickly, "Not me."

But evidently the sound of it pleased Gatsby for Tom remained "the polo

player" for the rest of the evening.

"I've never met so many celebrities!" Daisy exclaimed. "I liked that

man--what was his name?--with the sort of blue nose."

Gatsby identified him, adding that he was a small producer.

"Well, I liked him anyhow."

"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."

Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised by his graceful,

conservative fox-trot--I had never seen him dance before. Then 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: "In case there's a

fire or a flood," she explained, "or any act of God."

Tom appeared from his oblivion as we were sitting down to supper together.

"Do you mind if I eat with some people over here?" he said. "A fellow's

getting off some funny stuff."

"Go ahead," answered Daisy genially, "And if you want to take down any

addresses here's my little gold pencil. . . ." 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.

We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault--Gatsby had

been called to the phone and I'd enjoyed these same people only two

weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.

"How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?"

The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my

shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes.

"Wha?"

A 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:

"Oh, she's all right now. When she's had five or six cocktails she always

starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone."

"I do leave it alone," affirmed the accused hollowly.

"We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: 'There's somebody

that needs your help, Doc.' "

"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."

"Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool," mumbled Miss

Baedeker. "They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey."

"Then you ought to leave it alone," countered Doctor Civet.

"Speak for yourself!" cried Miss Baedeker violently. "Your hand shakes.

I wouldn't let you operate on me!"

It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was standing with

Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were

still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except

for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It 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.

"I like her," said Daisy, "I think she's lovely."

But the rest offended her--and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but

an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place"

that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village--appalled

by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too

obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing

to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed

to understand.

I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It

was dark here in front: only the bright door sent ten square feet of

light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes 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.

"Who is this Gatsby anyhow?" demanded Tom suddenly. "Some big bootlegger?"

"Where'd you hear that?" I inquired.

"I didn't hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are

just big bootleggers, you know."

"Not Gatsby," I said shortly.

He was silent for a moment. The pebbles of the drive crunched under his

feet.

"Well, he certainly must have strained himself to get this menagerie

together."

A breeze stirred the grey haze of Daisy's fur collar.

"At least they're more interesting than the people we know," she said

with an effort.

"You didn't look so interested."

"Well, I was."

Tom laughed and turned to me.

"Did you notice Daisy's face when that girl asked her to put her under

a cold shower?"

Daisy 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. When 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.

"Lots of people come who haven't been invited," she said suddenly.

"That girl hadn't been invited. They simply force their way in and he's

too polite to object."

"I'd like to know who he is and what he does," insisted Tom. "And I think

I'll make a point of finding out."

"I can tell you right now," she answered. "He owned some drug stores,

a lot of drug stores. He built them up himself."

The dilatory limousine came rolling up the drive.

"Good night, Nick," said Daisy.

Her 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. After all, in the very casualness of

Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from

her world. What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling

her back inside? What would happen now in the dim incalculable hours?

Perhaps 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.

I stayed late that night. Gatsby 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 guest rooms overhead. When he came down the steps at

last the tanned skin was drawn unusually tight on his face, and his eyes

were bright and tired.

"She didn't like it," he said immediately.

"Of course she did."

"She didn't like it," he insisted. "She didn't have a good time."

He was silent and I guessed at his unutterable depression.

"I feel far away from her," he said. "It's hard to make her understand."

"You mean about the dance?"

"The dance?" He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of

his fingers. "Old sport, the dance is unimportant."

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say:

"I never loved you." After she had obliterated three years with that

sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken.

One 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.

"And she doesn't understand," he said. "She used to be able to

understand. We'd sit for hours----"

He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds

and discarded favors and crushed flowers.

"I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the

shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said,

nodding determinedly. "She'll see."

He 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.

His 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. . . .

. . . 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.

They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night

with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of

the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the

darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the

corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk 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.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his

own. He 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. So he waited, listening for a moment longer

to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed

her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the

incarnation was complete.

Through 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. For 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. But

they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was

uncommunicable forever.

           

 

To be continued

 

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