chapter 2

Previous Story: Nick从父亲那里继承了不轻易评判他人的习惯，这让他成为许多人吐露心声的对象，也让他知道了很多人的隐私和秘密。参加完一战后，Nick决定学习债券生意，并和同事一起在纽约近郊租了一座便宜且破旧的木屋。那他究竟是如何知道Gatsby和Daisy之间的故事的呢？

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.

My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season.

The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville (市政厅) in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new (崭新的) under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.

It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name.

My own house was an eye-sore (丑陋的建筑), but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy 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 Tom Buchanans.

Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven (纽黑文市)

—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax (高潮后的下降).

His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion (用...的方式) that rather took your breath away:

for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest (森林湖). It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.

This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—

I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable (无法重演的) football game.

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, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial (乔治王殖民建筑风格) mansion overlooking the bay.

The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials (日晷) and brick walks and burning gardens

—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold (闪烁着金色的光芒), and wide open to the warm windy evening, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired (稻草色头发的)man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.

Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward.

Not even the effeminate swank (卖弄着女人味的) of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body

—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat.

It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed.

There was a touch of (少许)paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts (对他恨之入骨).

"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 (高年级学生联谊会), and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed (塌鼻子的) motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine(德梅因), the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into (轻巧地嵌入)the house by French windows at either end.

The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house.

A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.

They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.

I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.

Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out (余风逐渐平息)about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me.

She was extended full length at her end of the divan (矮长沙发), completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall.

If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness." (高兴到瘫掉了)

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see.

That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.

(I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less (仍然) charming.)

（1267 words）

今日短语

1. at the tip of在...的顶部

2. spanking new崭新的

3. savors of anti-climax走下坡路的意味

4. in a fashion用...样的方式

5. take one’s breath away让人咂舌，目瞪口呆

6. drift on漂泊

7. glow with闪烁着...的光芒

8. establish dominance over在...上占据了主导地位

9. a touch of少许，一点点

10. hate one’s guts对某人恨之入骨

11. buoy up浮在...之上

12. die out逐渐平息

13. be paralyzed with ...到瘫掉了

14. no less 依旧，仍是

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