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“Don't be silly; it's just two minutes to four.”
He sat down, miserably, as if I had pushed him, and simultaneously there was the sound of a motor turning into my lane. We both jumped up and, a little harrowed myself, I went out into the yard.
Under the dripping bare lilac trees a large open car was coming up the drive. It stopped. Daisy's face, tipped sideways beneath a three-cornered lavender hat, looked out at me with a bright ecstatic smile.
“Is this absolutely where you live, my dearest one?”
The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone before any words came through. A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I took it to help her from the car.
“Are you in love with me,” she said low in my ear. “Or why did I have to come alone?”
“That's the secret of Castle Rackrent. Tell your chauffeur to go far away and spend an hour.”
We went in. To my overwhelming surprise the living room was deserted.
“Well, that's funny!” I exclaimed.
“What's funny?”
She turned her head as there was a light, dignified knocking at the front door. I went out and opened it. Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.
With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire and disappeared into the living room. It wasn't a bit funny. Aware of the loud beating of my own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.
For half a minute there wasn't a sound. Then from the living room I heard a sort of choking murmur and part of a laugh followed by Daisy's voice on a clear artificial note.
“I certainly am awfully glad to see you again.”
“We haven't met for many years,” said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.
“Five years next November.”
The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate suggestion that they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac Finn brought it in on a tray.
Amid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself. Gatsby got himself into a shadow and while Daisy and I talked looked conscientiously from one to the other of us with tense unhappy eyes. However, as calmness wasn't an end in itself I made an excuse at the first possible moment and got to my feet.
“Where are you going?” demanded Gatsby in immediate alarm.
“I'll be back.”
“I've got to speak to you about something before you go.”
He followed me wildly into the kitchen, closed the door and whispered: “Oh, God!” in a miserable way.
“What's the matter?”
“This is a terrible mistake,” he said, shaking his head from side to side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“You're just embarrassed, that's all,” and luckily I added, “Daisy's embarrassed too.”
“She's embarrassed?” he repeated incredulously.
“Just as much as you are.”
“Don't talk so loud.”
“You're acting like a little boy,” I broke out impatiently. “Not only that but you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there all alone.”
He raised his hand to stop my words, looked at me with unforgettable reproach and opening the door cautiously went back into the other room.
I went in – after making every possible noise in the kitchen short of pushing over the stove – but I don't believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
“Oh, hello, old sport,” he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
“I want you and Daisy to come over to my house,” he said, “I'd like to show her around.”
“You're sure you want me to come?”
“Absolutely, old sport.”
Daisy went upstairs to wash her face – too late I thought with humiliation of my towels – while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn.
“My house looks well, doesn't it?” he demanded. “See how the whole front of it catches the light.”
I agreed that it was splendid.
“Yes.” His eyes went over it, every arched door and square tower. “It took me just three years to earn the money that bought it.”
“I thought you inherited your money.”
“I did, old sport,” he said automatically, “but I lost most of it in the big panic – the panic of the war.”
I think he hardly knew what he was saying, for when I asked him what business he was in he answered “That's my affair,” before he realized that it wasn't the appropriate reply.
“Oh, I've been in several things[45 - I've been in several things. – Я много чем занимался.],” he corrected himself. “I was in the drug business and then I was in the oil business. But I'm not in either one now.”
Before I could answer, Daisy came out of the house and two rows of brass buttons on her dress gleamed in the sunlight.
“That huge place THERE?” she cried pointing.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it, but I don't see how you live there all alone.”
“I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things. Celebrated people.”
Daisy admired everything: the house, the gardens, the beach.
He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.
His bedroom was the simplest room of all – except where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold. Daisy took the brush with delight and smoothed her hair, whereupon Gatsby sat down and shaded his eyes and began to laugh.
Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
“I've got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher – shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
“They're such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I've never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.”
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly. I began to walk about the room, examining various objects. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk.
“Who's this?”
“That's Mr. Dan Cody[46 - Dan Cody – Дэн Коди], old sport. He's dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.”
There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume – taken apparently when he was about eighteen.
“I adore it!” exclaimed Daisy.
After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming pool, and the hydroplane and the midsummer flowers – but outside Gatsby's window it began to rain again so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound.
Almost five years! His hand took hold of hers and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. They had forgotten me, Gatsby didn't know me now at all. I looked once more at them and went out of the room, leaving them there together.
Chapter 6
James Gatz[47 - James Gatz – Джеймс Гетц] – that was his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment – when he saw Dan Cody's yacht. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.
His parents were unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. So he invented Jay Gatsby, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
Dan Cody was fifty years old then, he was a millionaire, and an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. To the young Gatz the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. Cody asked him a few questions and found that he was clever, and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white trousers and a yachting cap.
He was employed as a steward, skipper, and secretary. The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. In Boston Dan Cody died.
He told me all this very much later.
For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone. But finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been there two minutes[48 - I hadn't been there two minutes. – Я не просидел и пары минут.] when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink.
“I'm delighted to see you,” said Gatsby. “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.
“I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan. I know your wife,” continued Gatsby.
“That so?[49 - That so? – Неужели?]“
Tom turned to me.
“You live near here, Nick?”
“Next door.”
“That so?”
Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Daisy's voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
“These things excite me SO,” she whispered.
“Look around,” suggested Gatsby. “You must see the faces of many people you've heard about.”
Daisy and Gatsby danced. I remember being surprised[50 - I remember being surprised – Я помню, как меня удивил.] by his graceful, conservative fox-trot – I had never seen him dance[51 - I had never seen him dance – Я никогда не видел его раньше танцующим.] before. Then they came to my house and sat on the steps for half an hour while at her request I remained watchfully in the garden.
The party was over. I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front of the house.
“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.
“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[52 - I'll make a point of finding out. – Я постараюсь это выяснить.].”
“I can tell you right now,” answered Daisy. “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.
Gatsby was silent.
“I feel far away from her,” he said.
He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say, “I never loved you.”
“You can't repeat the past.”
“Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course[53 - of course – конечно] you can!”
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house.
“I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly.
Chapter 7
It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night – and, as obscurely as it had begun, his career as Trimalchio[54 - Trimalchio – Тримальхион, герой сатирического романа Петрония «Сатирикон», вольноотпущенник и нувориш, задающий роскошные пиры] was over.
