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The Great Gatsby
Chapter 1
In my younger years my father gave me some advice. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
He didn't say any more but I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. A habit to reserve all judgments has opened up many curious natures to me. In college I was privy to the secret grief's of wild, unknown men.
When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform. I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction – Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.
There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.
My family has been prominent, well-to-do people for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today. I never saw this great-uncle but I look like him – I saw a painting that hangs in father's office.
I graduated from New Haven1 in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in the Great War. Then I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a cardboard bungalow at eighty a month. I had an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast, and muttered Finnish words to herself over the electric stove.
One morning some man stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. The life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold.
I lived at West Egg. I rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York. My house was between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was Gatsby's mansion.
Across the bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin. Her husband's name was Tom. I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Tom's family was enormously wealthy – even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach. Why they came East I don't know. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there, wherever people played polo and were rich together.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing on the front porch.
Tom had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.
He could not hide the enormous power of his body. It was a body capable of enormous leverage – a cruel body.
His voice was a gruff husky tenor. “Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he wanted me to like him.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I've got a nice place here,” he said. He turned me around, politely and abruptly. “We'll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space. The windows were ajar and gleaming. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were lying. They were both in white. I stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.
Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room. The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was completely motionless and with her chin raised a little.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise. She leaned slightly forward – then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I'm p-paralyzed with happiness.”
She laughed again, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face.
She murmured that the surname of the other girl was Baker. Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me and then quickly tipped her head back again.
I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth.
I told her how I had visited in Chicago some friends and how a dozen people had sent her their love.
“Do they miss me?” she cried.
“The whole town is desolate. All the automobiles are painted black and there's a persistent wail all night.”
“How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You must see the baby.”
“I'd like to.”
“She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you must see her. She's…”
Tom Buchanan rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What do you do, Nick?”
“I'm a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me.
At this point Miss Baker said “Absolutely!” It was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. It surprised her as much as it did me. She yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“You see,” Daisy told Miss Baker. “I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
I looked at Miss Baker, I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender girl, with an erect carriage. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don't know a single —”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced. Tom Buchanan took me from the room. We went out.
The two young women preceded us toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year.”
She looked at us all radiantly.
“Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“Let's plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What'll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly. “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer Daisy showed her little finger.
“Look!” she complained. “I hurt it.”
We all looked – the finger was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said. “I know you didn't mean to but you DID do it. Why did I marry such a man!”
She and Miss Baker accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained.
“I feel uncivilized with you, Daisy,” I said.
“Civilization's going to pieces,” said Tom violently. “If we don't look out the white race will be submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.”
“Tom is becoming a wise man,” said Daisy with an expression of sadness. “He reads clever books with long words in them. What was that word…”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “We, the dominant race, must watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“If you lived in California – ” began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her.
“This idea is that we – I, you, and you – we've produced all the things that go to make civilization – oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his words. Suddenly the telephone rang and Tom left.
Daisy leaned toward me.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a – of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. Then she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance devoid of meaning.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor,” I said.
“Don't talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“Don't you know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don't.”
“Tom's got some woman in New York,” said Miss Baker.
“Got some woman?” I repeated.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?”
Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
Daisy sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and said: “I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn, I think, a nightingale. He's singing so sweetly! It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then to me: “After dinner I want to show you my horses.”
The telephone rang inside, and Daisy shook her head decisively. The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker went into the library, while I followed Daisy around the house. Then we sat down side by side on a bench.
Daisy took her face in her hands.
“We don't know each other very well, Nick,” said Daisy. “Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding.”
“I wasn't back from the war.”
“That's true.” She hesitated. “Well, I've had a very bad time, and I'm pretty cynical about everything.”
I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I decided to talk about her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and – eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool – that's the best thing for a girl in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
“You see I think everything's terrible anyhow,” she went on. “Everybody thinks so – the most advanced people. And I KNOW. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.”
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat on the long couch and she read aloud to him from the newspaper.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table. She stood up.
“Ten o'clock,” she remarked. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan's going to play at Westchester tomorrow,” explained Daisy.
“Oh – you're Jordan Baker!”
I knew now why her face was familiar – it had looked out at me from many pictures of the sporting life.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won't you?”
“But you won't get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll make it. You know – push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing…”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven't heard anything.”
“She's a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “And her family…”
“Her family!” cried Daisy. “Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Nick will look after her, won't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. She's a friend from my girlhood.”
“Did you talk much to Nick on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can't remember, but I think we talked about something. Yes, I'm sure we did.“
“Don't believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side. As I started my motor Daisy called “Wait! I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were going to marry?”
“That's right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It's nonsense. I'm too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy. “We heard it from three people so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were talking about, but I wasn't engaged. Indeed, I had an old friend, but I had no intention to marry.
When I reached my house, I sat for a while in the yard. I turned my head and I saw that I was not alone – fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the stars. It was Mr. Gatsby himself.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that could be the beginning of our conversation. But I didn't call to him: when I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone in the darkness.
Chapter 2
One day I met Tom Buchanan's mistress. Yes, Tom Buchanan had a mistress. He visited popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, wandered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her – but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped he jumped to his feet and forced me from the car.
“We're getting off!” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”
He definitely decided to have my company. He thought that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do. I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence. I saw a garage – Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold – and I followed Tom inside.
The interior was bare; the only automobile visible was the dust-covered Ford which stood in a dim corner. The proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless, faintly handsome man.
“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him on the shoulder. “How's business?”
“I can't complain,” answered Wilson. “When are you going to sell me that automobile?”
“Next week. My man is working on it now.”
“He is working pretty slow, right?”
“No, he isn't,” said Tom coldly. “And if you think so, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all.”
“I don't mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. “I just meant…”
Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and saw a woman. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom. Then she spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:
“Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down.”
“Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office.
“I want to see you,” said Tom intently. “Get on the next train.”
“All right.”
“I'll meet you by the news-stand.”
She nodded and moved away from him. George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.
We waited for her down the road and out of sight.
“Terrible place, isn't it?” said Tom.
“Awful.”
“It does her good to get away.”
“Doesn't her husband object?”
“Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York.“
So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York – or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a magazine, and in the station drug store some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Then said, pointing at the grey old man with a basket.
“I want one of those dogs,” she said. “I want to get one for the apartment. They're so nice.”
In a basket the grey old man had pretty puppies.
“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson.
“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”
“I'd like to get one of those police dogs2; do you have that kind?”
The man peered into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, by the back of the neck.
“That's no police dog,” said Tom.
“No, it's not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment in his voice. “But look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never get cold!”
“I think it's cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is it?”
“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten dollars.”
The puppy settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.
“That dog? That dog's a boy.”
“It's a bitch,” said Tom decisively. “Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it.”
We drove over to Fifth Avenue, very warm and soft on the summer Sunday afternoon.
“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”
“No, you don't,” interposed Tom quickly. “Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?”
“Come on,” she urged. “I'll telephone my sister Catherine. They say she is very beautiful.”
“Well, I'd like to, but…”
We went on. At 158th Street the cab stopped. Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went in.
The apartment was on the top floor – a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey.
I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner.
Then some people came – Myrtle's sister, Catherine, Mr. McKee, a pale feminine man from the flat below, and his wife.
Catherine was a slender girl of about thirty with red hair. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking of innumerable pottery bracelets upon her arms. She came in and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.
Mr. McKee was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he belonged to the “world of art” and I learned later that he was a photographer. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.
Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume and her personality had also changed. Her intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter and her gestures became different.
“My dear,” she told her sister, “most of these people will cheat you every time. All they think of is money.”
“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it's wonderful.”
Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment.
“It's just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I put it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like.”
“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester could only get you in that pose!”
We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently.
“I would change the light,” he said after a moment.
“I wouldn't think it's reasonable,” cried Mrs. McKee. “I think it's…”
Her husband said “Sh!” and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned and got to his feet.
“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle.”
Myrtle raised her eyebrows, then she kissed the dog and went to the kitchen.
“I've done some nice things out on Long Island,” said Mr. McKee.
Tom looked at him.
“Two of them we have downstairs.”
“Two what?” demanded Tom.
“Two pictures. One of them I call 'Montauk Point – the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point – the Sea.'”
The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.
“Where do you live? On Long Island, too?” she inquired.
“I live at West Egg.”
“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him.”
“Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I'm scared of him.”
Mr. McKee said, “I'd like to do more work on Long Island. All I need is a start.”
“Ask Myrtle,” said Tom. “She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can make some pictures of him.” His lips moved silently. “'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that.”
Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: “Neither of them can stand the person they're married to.”
“Can't they?”
“Can't STAND them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “But why do they live with them if they can't stand them? I would get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”
“Doesn't she like Wilson either?”
The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle who had heard my question and it was violent and obscene, “Of course, not.”
“You see?” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce.”
Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at this lie.
“When they get married,” continued Catherine, “they're going West to live for a while there.”
“Why not to Europe?”
“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”
“Really?”
“Just last year. I went over there with a girl friend.”
“Stay long?”
“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We had more than twelve hundred dollars when we started but we lost everything. God, how I hated that town!”
“I almost made a mistake, too,” Mrs. McKee declared vigorously. “I almost married a man who was below me. Everybody was saying to me: 'Lucille, that man's below you!' But luckily I met Chester!”
“Yes, but listen,” said Myrtle Wilson, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn't marry him.”
“I know I didn't.”
“And I married him,” said Myrtle, ambiguously. “And that's the difference between your case and mine.”
“Why did you, Myrtle?” demanded Catherine. “Nobody forced you to.”
“I made a mistake,” she declared vigorously. “I married him because I thought he was a gentleman, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe.”
“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Catherine.
“Crazy about him!” cried Myrtle incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”
She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me. I tried to smile.
“I was crazy only when I married him. He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came to take it back when he was out.”
She looked around to see who was listening: “'Oh, is that your suit?' I said. But I gave it to him and then I lay down and was crying all afternoon.”
“She really must divorce,” resumed Catherine to me. “They've been living over that garage for eleven years.”
The bottle of whiskey – a second one – appeared. I wanted to get out and walk away but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild argument.
Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly told me the story of her first meeting with Tom.
“We were sitting on the train, facing each other. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. Tom had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him. When we came into the station he was next to me – and so I told him I'd call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited when I got into a taxi with him. My only thought was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.'“
She turned to Mrs. McKee and gave an artificial laughter.
“My dear,” she cried, “I'm going to give you this dress one day. I'll buy another one tomorrow. I'm going to make a list of all the things I have to do. A massage, and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ash-trays, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother's grave.”
It was ten o'clock. Mr. McKee was asleep on a chair. The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other. At midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.
“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai…”
Making a short movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.
Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women's voices. Mr. McKee awoke from his sleep and went toward the door. I took my hat and followed him.
“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“All right,” I agreed, “I'll be glad to.”
Then I was lying half asleep on the bench at the Pennsylvania Station, and waiting for the four o'clock train.
