Chapter 6

Previous Story：Nick终于想起Baker小姐就是那位著名的高尔夫球运动员。而Daisy声称要撮合Nick和Baker，在Nick离开之前才突然想到向他确认关于他订婚了的传言。Nick回到家后，看到了站住室外瞭望对岸的人影，直觉那人就是他的邻居Gatsby先生。

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. 

This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges（山脊） and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke

—and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through（粉碎） the powdery air. 

Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along（爬行） an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up（扬起灰尘） an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas（视网膜） are one yard high.

They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.

Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. 

But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground（垃圾倾倒场）.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. 

There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known.

His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about（漫步）, 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 by the ashheaps（灰烬堆） he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up（喝醉） a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence.

The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare.

The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. 

One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner.

It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. 

He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant——"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage.

Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door.

She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can.

Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine（双绉绸）, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering（燃烧）. 

She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. 

Then she wet her lips and without turning around 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, mingling immediately with （迅速结合） the cement color of the walls.

A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity（附近）—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand（报摊） on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes（鱼雷，此指儿童的玩具） in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"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. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

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. Tom deferred that much to（顺从） the sensibilities of those East Eggers（东卵人）who might be on the train.

（1085 words）

今日短语:

1. come to rest 停止移动

2. stir up 扬起（灰尘）

3. saunter about 闲逛，漫步

4. tank up 过量饮酒，喝醉

5. border on sth 近乎，濒于

6. fade off （声音）逐渐变小

7. block sth out 挡住（光线）

8. defer to 遵从，顺从

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