“Twelve minutes to my train.”
I didn’t want to go to the city. I wasn’t worth a decent stroke of
work, but it was more than that—I didn’t want to leave Gatsby. I
missed that train, and then another, before I could get myself away.
“I’ll call you up,” I said finally.
“Do, old sport.”
“I’ll call you about noon.”
We walked slowly down the steps.
“I suppose Daisy’ll call too.” He looked at me anxiously, as if he
hoped I’d corroborate this.
“I suppose so.”
“Well, goodbye.”
We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I
remembered something and turned around.
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the
whole damn bunch put together.”
I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever
gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he
nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and
understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact
all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of
colour against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I
first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and
drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his
corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his
incorruptible dream, as he waved them goodbye.
I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for
that—I and the others.
“Goodbye,” I called. “I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the quotations on an
interminable amount of stock, then I fell asleep in my swivel-chair.
Just before noon the phone woke me, and I started up with sweat
breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me
up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between
hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other
way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool,
as if a divot from a green golf-links had come sailing in at the
office window, but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.
“I’ve left Daisy’s house,” she said. “I’m at Hempstead, and I’m going
down to Southampton this afternoon.”
Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act
annoyed me, and her next remark made me rigid.
“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”
“How could it have mattered then?”
Silence for a moment. Then:
“However—I want to see you.”
“I want to see you, too.”
“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this
afternoon?”
“No—I don’t think this afternoon.”
“Very well.”
“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various—”
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking
any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I
know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table
that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
I called Gatsby’s house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I
tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was
being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my
timetable, I drew a small circle around the three-fifty train. Then I
leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I passed the ash-heaps on the train that morning I had crossed
deliberately to the other side of the car. I supposed there’d be a
curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark
spots in the dust, and some garrulous man telling over and over what
had happened, until it became less and less real even to him and he
could tell it no longer, and Myrtle Wilson’s tragic achievement was
forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at
the garage after we left there the night before.
They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have
broken her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she
was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had
already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this, she
immediately fainted, as if that was the intolerable part of the
affair. Someone, kind or curious, took her in his car and drove her in
the wake of her sister’s body.
Until long after midnight a changing crowd lapped up against the front
of the garage, while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on
the couch inside. For a while the door of the office was open, and
everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it.
Finally someone said it was a shame, and closed the door. Michaelis
and several other men were with him; first, four or five men, later
two or three men. Still later Michaelis had to ask the last stranger
to wait there fifteen minutes longer, while he went back to his own
place and made a pot of coffee. After that, he stayed there alone with
Wilson until dawn.
About three o’clock the quality of Wilson’s incoherent muttering
changed—he grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He
announced that he had a way of finding out whom the yellow car
belonged to, and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his
wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose
swollen.
But when he heard himself say this, he flinched and began to cry “Oh,
my God!” again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt
to distract him.
“How long have you been married, George? Come on there, try and sit
still a minute, and answer my question. How long have you been
married?”
“Twelve years.”
“Ever had any children? Come on, George, sit still—I asked you a
question. Did you ever have any children?”
The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light, and
whenever Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside it
sounded to him like the car that hadn’t stopped a few hours before.
He didn’t like to go into the garage, because the work bench was
stained where the body had been lying, so he moved uncomfortably
around the office—he knew every object in it before morning—and from
time to time sat down beside Wilson trying to keep him more quiet.
“Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you
haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church
and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?”
“Don’t belong to any.”
“You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must
have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen,
George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?”
“That was a long time ago.”
The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking—for a moment
he was silent. Then the same half-knowing, half-bewildered look came
back into his faded eyes.
“Look in the drawer there,” he said, pointing at the desk.
“Which drawer?”
“That drawer—that one.”
Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it
but a small, expensive dog-leash, made of leather and braided
silver. It was apparently new.
“This?” he inquired, holding it up.
Wilson stared and nodded.
“I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it, but I
knew it was something funny.”
“You mean your wife bought it?”
“She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau.”
Michaelis didn’t see anything odd in that, and he gave Wilson a dozen
reasons why his wife might have bought the dog-leash. But conceivably
Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before, from Myrtle,
because he began saying “Oh, my God!” again in a whisper—his comforter
left several explanations in the air.
“Then he killed her,” said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly.
“Who did?”
“I have a way of finding out.”
“You’re morbid, George,” said his friend. “This has been a strain to
you and you don’t know what you’re saying. You’d better try and sit
quiet till morning.”
“He murdered her.”
“It was an accident, George.”
Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened
slightly with the ghost of a superior “Hm!”
“I know,” he said definitely. “I’m one of these trusting fellas and I
don’t think any harm to nobody, but when I get to know a thing I know
it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he
wouldn’t stop.”
Michaelis had seen this too, but it hadn’t occurred to him that there
was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs. Wilson had
been running away from her husband, rather than trying to stop any
particular car.
“How could she of been like that?”
“She’s a deep one,” said Wilson, as if that answered the question.
“Ah-h-h—”
He began to rock again, and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his
hand.
“Maybe you got some friend that I could telephone for, George?”
This was a forlorn hope—he was almost sure that Wilson had no friend:
there was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later
when he noticed a change in the room, a blue quickening by the window,
and realized that dawn wasn’t far off. About five o’clock it was blue
enough outside to snap off the light.
Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash-heaps, where small grey
clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the
faint dawn wind.
“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she
might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the
window”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and
leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘God knows what
you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but
you can’t fool God!’ ”
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at
the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and
enormous, from the dissolving night.
“God sees everything,” repeated Wilson.
“That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him. Something made him
turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson
stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding
into the twilight.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By six o’clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a
car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before
who had promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for three, which
he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now, and
Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and
hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.
His movements—he was on foot all the time—were afterward traced to
Port Roosevelt and then to Gad’s Hill, where he bought a sandwich that
he didn’t eat, and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and
walking slowly, for he didn’t reach Gad’s Hill until noon. Thus far
there was no difficulty in accounting for his time—there were boys who
had seen a man “acting sort of crazy,” and motorists at whom he stared
oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared
from view. The police, on the strength of what he said to Michaelis,
that he “had a way of finding out,” supposed that he spent that time
going from garage to garage thereabout, inquiring for a yellow car. On
the other hand, no garage man who had seen him ever came forward, and
perhaps he had an easier, surer way of finding out what he wanted to
know. By half-past two he was in West Egg, where he asked someone the
way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knew Gatsby’s name.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the
butler that if anyone phoned word was to be brought to him at the
pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had
amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him to
pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn’t to be
taken out under any circumstances—and this was strange, because the
front right fender needed repair.
Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he
stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he
needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among
the yellowing trees.
No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep
and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone
to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t
believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was
true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a
high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have
looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered
as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight
was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without
being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted
fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward
him through the amorphous trees.
The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s protégés—heard the
shots—afterwards he could only say that he hadn’t thought anything
much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’s house
and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that
alarmed anyone. But they knew then, I firmly believe. With scarcely a
word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener, and I hurried
down to the pool.
There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the
fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.
With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden
mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that
scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental
course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves
revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red
circle in the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener
saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was
complete.