第16天 ! 盖茨比的身世来历

Chapter6

Aboutthis time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning atGatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say.

"Anythingto say about what?" inquired Gatsby politely.

"Why,--anystatement to give out."

Ittranspired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby's namearound his office in a connection which he either wouldn't reveal or didn'tfully understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he hadhurried out "to see."

Itwas a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. Gatsby'snotoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and sobecome authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell justshort of being news. Contemporary legends such as the "undergroundpipe-line to Canada" attached themselves to him, and there was onepersistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat thatlooked 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 NorthDakota, isn't easy to say.

JamesGatz--that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at theage of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of hiscareer--when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flaton Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach thatafternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was alreadyJay Gatsby who borrowed a row-boat, pulled out to the TUOLOMEE and informedCody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

Isuppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents wereshiftless and unsuccessful farm people--his imagination had never reallyaccepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of WestEgg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a sonof God--a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that--and he must beabout His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretriciousbeauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-oldboy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to theend.

Forover a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superioras a clam digger and a salmon fisher or in any other capacity that brought himfood and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the halffierce, half lazy work of the bracing days.

Heknew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, ofyoung virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they werehysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took forgranted.

Buthis heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantasticconceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudinessspun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and themoon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night headded to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon somevivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided anoutlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality ofreality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy'swing.

Aninstinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the smallLutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks,dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destinyitself, and despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his waythrough. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching forsomething to do on the day that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallowsalong shore.

Codywas 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 copperthat made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on theverge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this an infinite number of womentried to separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications bywhich Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to hisweakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgidjournalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores forfive years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny at Little Girl Bay.

Tothe young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, theyacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world. I suppose he smiledat Cody--he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. Atany rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand newname) and found that he was quick, and extravagantly ambitious. A few dayslater he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white ducktrousers and a yachting cap. And when the TUOLOMEE left for the West Indies andthe Barbary Coast Gatsby left too.

Hewas employed in a vague personal capacity--while he remained with Cody he wasin turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody soberknew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about and he provided forsuch contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangementlasted 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 onboard one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.

Iremember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with ahard empty face--the pioneer debauchee who during one phase of American lifebrought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontierbrothel 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 hishair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.

Andit was from Cody that he inherited money--a legacy of twenty-five thousanddollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device that was usedagainst him but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was leftwith his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby hadfilled out to the substantiality of a man.

Hetold me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea ofexploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't evenfaintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I hadreached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I takeadvantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clearthis set of misconceptions away.

Itwas a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn'tsee him or hear his voice on the phone--mostly I was in New York, trottingaround with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt--butfinally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been there twominutes 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 werea party of three on horseback--Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman ina brown riding habit who had been there previously.

"I'mdelighted to see you," said Gatsby standing on his porch.

"I'mdelighted that you dropped in."

Asthough they cared!

"Sitright down. Have a cigarette or a cigar." He walked around the roomquickly, ringing bells. "I'll have something to drink for you in just aminute."

Hewas profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasyanyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that thatwas all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. Alittle champagne? Nothing at all, thanks.... I'm sorry----