【有声英语文学名著】了不起的盖茨比 第3章（1）

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by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Chapter 3 - Part 1

 

  There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths¹ among the whisperings and the champagne² and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit³ the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts⁴ of foam⁵. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon⁶ scampered⁷ like a brisk yellow bug⁸ to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled⁹ all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages¹⁰ of the night before.

Every Friday five crates¹¹ of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.

At least once a fortnight a corps¹² of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet¹³ tables, garnished¹⁴ with glistening¹⁵ hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry¹⁶ pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass¹⁷ rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing¹⁸ up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons¹⁹ and verandas²¹ are gaudy²² with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails²⁴ permeate²⁵ the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter²⁶ and laughter, and casual innuendo²⁷ and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail²³ music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality²⁸, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell²⁹ with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter³¹ and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous³² moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide³³ on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary³⁴ hush³⁵; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the FOLLIES³⁶. The party has begun.

I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there. They got into automobiles³⁷ which bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity³⁸ of heart that was its own ticket of admission.

I had been actually invited. A chauffeur³⁹ in a uniform of robin’s-egg blue crossed my lawn early that Saturday morning with a surprisingly formal note from his employer: the honor would be entirely⁴⁰ Gatsby’s, it said, if I would attend his “little party.” that night. He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar⁴¹ combination of circumstances had prevented it—signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic⁴² hand.

Dressed up in white flannels⁴³ I went over to his lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls⁴⁴ and eddies⁴⁵ of people I didn’t know—though here and there was a face I had noticed on the commuting⁴⁶ train. I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry, and all talking in low, earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently⁴⁷ any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment⁴⁸ when Jordan Baker⁴⁹ came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to some one before I should begin to address cordial remarks to the passers-by.

“Hello!” I roared, advancing toward her. My voice seemed unnaturally⁵⁰ loud across the garden.

“I thought you might be here,” she responded absently as I came up. “I remembered you lived next door to——” She held my hand impersonally⁵¹, as a promise that she’d take care of me in a minute, and gave ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who stopped at the foot of the steps.

“Hello!” they cried together. “Sorry you didn’t win.”

That was for the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.

“You don’t know who we are,” said one of the girls in yellow, “but we met you here about a month ago.”

“You’ve dyed your hair since then,” remarked Jordan, and I started, but the girls had moved casually⁵² on and her remark was addressed to the premature⁵³ moon, produced like the supper, no doubt, out of a caterer’s basket. With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine, we descended⁵⁴ the steps and sauntered about the garden. A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight⁵⁵, and we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble⁵⁶.

“Do you come to these parties often?” inquired Jordan of the girl beside her.

“The last one was the one I met you at,” answered the girl, in an alert confident voice. She turned to her companion: “Wasn’t it for you, Lucille?”

It was for Lucille, too.

“I like to come,” Lucille said. “I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked me my name and address—inside of a week I got a package from Croirier’s with a new evening gown in it.”

“Did you keep it?” asked Jordan.

“Sure I did. I was going to wear it to-night, but it was too big in the bust⁵⁷ and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads⁵⁸. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with ANYbody.”

“Who doesn’t?” I inquired.

“Gatsby. Somebody told me——”

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidentially⁵⁹.

“Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.”

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles⁶⁰ bent⁶¹ forward and listened eagerly.

“I don’t think it’s so much THAT,” argued Lucille sceptically; “it’s more that he was a German spy during the war.”

One of the men nodded in confirmation⁶².

“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany,” he assured us positively⁶³.

“Oh, no,” said the first girl, “it couldn’t be that, because he was in the American army during the war.” As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. “You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s looking at him. I’ll bet he killed a man.”

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony⁶⁴ to the romantic speculation⁶⁵ he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

The first supper—there would be another one after midnight—was now being served, and Jordan invited me to join her own party, who were spread around a table on the other side of the garden. There were three married couples and Jordan’s escort, a persistent⁶⁶ undergraduate given to violent innuendo, and obviously under the impression that sooner or later Jordan was going to yield him up her person to a greater or lesser⁶⁷ degree. Instead of rambling⁶⁸, this party had preserved a dignified⁶⁹ homogeneity, and assumed to itself the function of representing the staid nobility of the country-side—East Egg condescending⁷⁰ to West Egg, and carefully on guard against its spectroscopic gayety.

“Let’s get out,” whispered Jordan, after a somehow wasteful⁷¹ and inappropriate half-hour. “This is much too polite for me.”

We got up, and she explained that we were going to find the host: I had never met him, she said, and it was making me uneasy. The undergraduate nodded in a cynical⁷², melancholy⁷³ way.

The bar, where we glanced first, was crowded, but Gatsby was not there. She couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the veranda²⁰. On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.

A stout³⁰, middle-aged⁷⁴ man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.

“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.

“About what?” He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.

“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain⁷⁵. I ascertained⁷⁶. They’re real.”

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