Chapter nine of the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After two years,
I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next
day only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspapermen in and out
of Gatsby's front door. A rope stretched across the main gate, and a
policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they
could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered,
open mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a
detective, used the expression madman as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon,
and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next
morning. Most of those reports were a nightmare, grotesque, circumstantial, eager,
and untrue. When Michaelis's testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions
of his wife, I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in
racy pasquinade. But Catherine, who might have said anything and say a word,
she showed a surprising amount of character about it, too, looked at
the corner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that
her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her
husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself
of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was
more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man deranged by
a grief in order that the case might remain in its simplest form, and
it rested there. But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential.
I found myself on Gatsby's side and alone. From the moment I telephoned news
of the catastrophe to West Egg village. Every surmise about him, and every
practical question was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused.
Then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak
our an hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible because no one
else was interested. Interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to
which everyone has some vague right. At the end, I called up Daisy
half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation,
But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon and taken baggage with them.
Left no address, no say when they'd be back, no any idea
where they are. How I could reach them, I don't know, can't
say. I wanted to get somebody for him. I wanted to go into
the room where he lay and reassure him I'll get somebody for you. Gatsby,
don't worry. Just trust me, and I'll get somebody for you.
Meyer Wolfshein's name wasn't in the phone book. The butler gave me his office
address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had
the number, it was long after five, and no one answered the phone.
Will you ring again, I've rung three times. It's very important.
Sorry, I'm afraid no one's there. I went back to the drawing room
and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people
who suddenly filled it. But though they drew back the sheet and looked at
Catsby with shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain. Look here,
old Sport, You've got to get somebody for me. You've got to try
hard. I can't go through this alone. Somebody started asking questions but I
broke away, and, going upstairs, looked hastily through the unlocked parts of
his desk. He'd never told me definitely that his parents were dead, But
there was nothing, only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten
violence, staring down from the wall. Next morning, I sent the butler
to New York with a letter to Wolfsheim, which asked for information and urged
him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I
wrote it. I was sure he'd start when he saw the newspapers, just
as I was sure there'd be a wire from Daisy before noon. But neither
a wire nor Wolfsheim arrived. No one arrived except more police and photographers and
newspapermen. When the butler brought back Wolfsheim's answer, I began to have feelings
of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all. Dear
mister Carroway, this has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life.
To me, I hardly can believe it that it is true at all.
Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think.
I cannot come down now, as I am tied up in some very important
business and cannot get mixed up in this thing. Now. If there's anything
I can do a little later, let me know. In a letter by
Edka, I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like
this, and I am completely knocked down and out yours truly a wolf shine,
and then hastily addenda beneath, let me know about the funeral, etc.
Do not know his family at all. When the phone rang that afternoon
and long distance said Chicago was calling, I thought this would be Daisy at
last, but the connection came through as a man's voice, very thin and
far away. This is Slago speaking. Yes, the name was unfamiliar.
Hell of a note, isn't it get my wire? There haven't been any
wires, young pox and trouble, he said rapidly. They picked him up
when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New
York giving him numbers just five minutes before. What do you know about that?
Hey, you never can tell in these hick towns. Hello, I
interrupted, breathlessly. Look here, this isn't mister Gatsby. Mister Gatsby's dead.
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed
by an exclamation, then a quick squawk as the connection was broken. I
think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gats
arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving
immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came. It was Gatsby's father,
a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long,
cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement,
and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands, he began
to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray beard that I had difficulty in getting
off his coat. He was on the point of collapse. So I took
him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for something
to eat. But he wouldn't eat, and the glass of milk spilled from
his trembling hand. I shot in the Chicago newspaper. He said, it
was all into Chicago newspaper. I started right away. I didn't know how
to reach you. His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.
It was a madman. He said, you must have been mad.
Wouldn't you like some coffee? I urged him, I don't want anything.
I'm all right now, mister Carraway, well, I'm all right now.
Where have they got Jimmy? I took him into the drawing room where his
son lay and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the
steps and were looking into the hall. When I told them who had arrived,
they went reluctantly away. After a little while, mister Gatts opened the
door and came out his mouth ajar. His face flushed slightly, his eyes
leaking isolated in unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer
has the quality of ghastly surprise. And when he looked around him now for
the first time, and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the
great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be
mixed with an odd pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs while he
took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred
until he came. I didn't know what you'd want, mister Gatsby. Gatch
is my name, mister gats I thought you might want to take the body
west. He shook his head. Jimmy always liked it better down east.
He rose up to his position in the east. Were you a friend of
my boysh mister, we were close friends. He had a big future beforehim.
You know, he was only a young man, but he had a
lot of brain power. Here he touched his head impressively, and I nodded.
If he'd lived, he'd have been a great man, a man like
James Jay Hill. He'd have helped build up the country. That's true,
I said, uncomfortably. He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take
it from the bed, and lay down stiffly. Was instantly asleep. That
night, an obviously frightened person called up and demanded to know who I was.
Before he give his name. This is mister Carraway, I said all.
He sounded relieved. This is Kilp Springer. I was relieved too,
for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby's grave. I didn't want it
to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I'd been calling
up a few people myself. They were hard to find. The funerals tomorrow,
I said, three o'clock here at the house. I wish you'd tell
anybody who'd be interested. Oh I will, he broke out hastily. Of
course I'm not likely to see anybody, but if I do, his tone
made me suspicious. Of course you'd be there yourself. Well, i'll certainly
try. What I called up about is wait a minute, I interrupted,
how about saying you'll come? Well, the fact is, the truth of
the matter is that I'm staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and
they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there's a
sort of picnic or something. Of course, i'll do my best to get
away. I ejaculated and unrestrained. Huh, And he must have heard me,
for he went on nervously. What I called up about was a pair
of shoes I left there. I wonder if it'd be too much trouble to
have the butler send them on. You see their tennis shoes, and I'm
sort of helpless without them. My address is care of b F. I
didn't hear the rest of the name because I hung up the receiver. After
that, I felt a certain shame for Gatsby. One gentleman to whom I
telephoned, implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was
my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly
at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby's liquor, and I should have known better
than to call him. The morning of the funeral, I went up to
New York to see Meyer Wolfsheim. I couldn't seem to reach him any other
way. The door that I pushed open on the advice of an elevator boy
was marked the Swastika Holding Company, and at first there didn't seem to be
anyone inside. But when I'd shouted hello several times in vain, an argument
broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely jewess appeared at an interior
door and scrutinized me with black, hostile eyes. Nobody's in, she said,
mister wolf Shim's gone to Chicago. The first part of this was obviously
untrue, for someone had begun to whistle the rosary tunelessly inside. Please say
that mister Carroway wants to see him. I can't get him back from Chicago,
can I? At this moment, a voice, unmistakably wolf Shims called
Stella from the other side of the door. Leave your name on the desk,
she said quickly. I'll give it to him when he gets back,
but I know he's there. She took a step toward me and began to
slide her hand indignantly up and down her hips. You young men think you
could force your way in here any time, she scolded. We're getting sick
and tired of it. When I say he's in Chicago, he's in Chicago,
I mentioned Gadsby. Oh. She looked at me over again. Will
you just what was your name? She vanished In a moment Meyer wolfsheim stood
solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his
office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all
of us, and offered me a cigar. My memory goes back to when
I first met him, he said, a young major, just out of
the army and covered over with mentals. He got into war. He was
so hard up he had to keep on bearing his uniform because he couldn't buy
some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he came into vine
Brenda's pool room at forty third Street and asked for a job. He hadn't
eat anything for a couple of days. Come on, have some lunchers me,
I said, he ate more than four dollars of food in half an
hour. Did you start him in business? I inquired, start him?
I made him. Oh. I raised him up out of nothing, right
out of the gutter. I saw right away that he was a fine appearing
gentleman, the young man. And when he told me he was at Oxford,
I knew I could use him good. I got him to join the
American Legion, and he used to stand high there. Right off. He
did some work for a client of mind up to Albany. Were so thick
like that in everything he held up two bulbous fingers, always together. I
wondered if this partnership had included the World Series transaction in nineteen nineteen. Now
he's dead, I said, after a moment. You were his closest friends,
so I know you want to come to his funeral this afternoon. I'd
like to come. Well, come. Then the hair and his nostrils quivered
slightly, and as he shook his head, his eyes filled with tears.
I can't do it. I can't get mixed up in it, he said,
there's nothing to get mixed up in. It's all over now when a
man gets killed. I never like to get mixed up in it in any
way, I keep out. When I was a young man, it was
different if a friend of mine died, no matter how I stuck with him
to the end. You may think that sentimental, but I mean it twos
a bit of end. I saw that, for some reason of his own,
he was determined not to come, so I stood up. Are you
a college man, he inquired Suddenly. For a moment I thought he was
going to suggest a connection, but he only nodded and shook my hand.
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive,
and not after he is dead, he suggested. After that, My own
rule is to let everything alone. When I left his office, the sky
had turned dark, and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle.
After changing my clothes, I went next door and found mister Gatts walking up
and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his and in his son's
possessions was continually increasing, and now he had something to show me Jimmy shent
me this picture. He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. Look there.
It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty.
With many hands, he pointed out every detail to me eagerly. Look
there, and then he sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it
so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house
itself. Jimmy sent it to me. I think it's a very pretty picture.
It shows up well, very well. Had you seen him lately.
He come out to Shee me two years ago and bought me the house I
live in now. Of course, we was broke when he run off from
home, but I she now there was reason for it. He knew he
had a big future in front of him, and ever since he made a
success. He was very generous with me. He seemed reluctant to put away
the picture, held it for another minute, gingerly before my eyes. Then
he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a
book called hop Along Cassidy. Look there, this is a book he had
when he was a boy. It just shows you. He opened it at
the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last
fly leaf was printed the word schedule and the date September twelfth, nineteen o
six, and underneath rise from bed six am, dumbell exercise in wall,
scaling six fifteen to six thirty am, study electricity seven to fifteen to eight
fifteen am. Work eight thirty to four thirty pm. Baseball in sports.
Four thirty to five PM, practice elocution, poison, how to attain it?
Five to six pm. Study needed inventions seven to nine pm. General
resolves. No wasting time at shafters or a name indecipherable. No more smoking
or chewing every other day. Read one improving book or magazine per week,
save five dollars crossed out three dollars per week. Be better to parents.
I came acrossish book by accident, said the old man. It just shows
you, don't it. It just shows you. Jimmy was bound to get
ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice
what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that.
He taught me I ate like a hog once, and I beat him for
it. He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud,
and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy
down the list for my own use. A little before three, the Lutheran
Minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for
other cars. So did Gatsby's father, And as the time passed and the
servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink
anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way.
The Minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and
asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use.
Nobody came. About five o'clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and
stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate. First a motor hearse, horribly
black and wet. Then mister gats and the Minister and me in the limousine,
and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg
in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through
the gate into the cemetery, I heard a car stop, and then the
sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around.
It was the man with Allied glasses, whom I had found marveling over Gatsby's
books in the library one night, three months before. I'd never seen him
since then. I don't know how he knew about the funeral or even his
name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off
and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from gatsby his grave. I
tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too
far away, and I could only remember without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent
a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur, blessed are the
dead that the rain falls on, And then the Allied man said, amen
to that in a brave voice. We straggled down quickly through the rain to
the cars. Allies spoke to me by the gate. I couldn't get to
the house, he remarked, neither could anybody else. Go on, he
started, why my god, they used to go there by the hundreds.
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and inn the poor son
of a bitch, he said. One of my most vivid memories is of
coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those
who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union station at six
o'clock of a December evening with a few Chicago go friends already caught up into
their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the
fur coats of the girls returning from miss this or that, and the chatter
of frozen breath, and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old
acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations. Are you going to? The Ordways,
the Herseys, the Schultzes, and the long green tickets clasped tight in
our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee
and Saint Paul Railroad, looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the
gate. When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow,
our snow began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and
the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations. Moved by a sharp, wild brace,
came suddenly into the air we drew in deep breaths of it as we
walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with
this country for one strange hour before we melted distinguishably into it again. That's
my Middle West. Not the weed or the prairies or the lost Swede towns,
but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and
sleigh bells in the frosty dark, and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by
lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn,
with the feel of those long winters, a little complaisant from growing up
in the caraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by
a family name. I see now that this has been a story of the
West. After all, Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I were
all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us suddenly
unadaptable to Eastern life, even when the East excited the most, even when
I was most keenly aware of its superiority to the board, sprawling, swollen
towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions, which spared only the children
and the very old. Even then, it had always for me a quality
of distortion. West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I
see it as a night scene by el Greco. A hundred houses at once
conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon.
In the foreground. Four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the
sidewalk with a stretcher, on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening
dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels.
Gravely, the men turn in at a house, the wrong house,
but no one knows the woman's name, and no one cares. After Gadsby's
death, the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eye's
power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the
air, and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line, I
decided to come back home. There was one thing to be done before I
left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone.
But I wanted to leave things in order, and not just trust that
obliging an indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and
talked over and around what had happened to us together and what had happened afterward
to me. And she lay perfectly still, listening in a big chair.
She was dressed to play golf, and I remember thinking she looked like a
good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of
an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on
her knee. When I had finished, she told me, without comment that
she was engaged to another man. I doubted that, though there were several
she could have married at the knot of her head, but I pretended to
be surprised. For just a minute. I wondered if I was making a
mistake. Then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say
goodbye. Ever less, you did throw me over, said Jordan. Suddenly,
you threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about
you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt
a little dizzy for a while. We shook hands. Oh, and do
you remember, she added, the conversation we had once about driving a car.
Why not exactly? You said a bad driver was only safe until she
meant another bad driver. Well, I meant another bad driver, didn't I?
I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess.
I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was
your secret pride. I'm thirty, I said, I'm five years too old
to lie to myself and call it on her. She didn't answer. Angry
and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
One afternoon laden October, I saw Tom Buchanan. He was walking ahead of
me along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a
little from his body as if to fight off interference, his head moving sharply
here and there, adapting itself to his restless eyes. Just as I slowed
up to avoid overtaking him, he stopped and began frowning into the windows of
a jewelry store. Suddenly he saw me and walked back, holding out his
hand. What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with
me? Yes? You know what I think of you. You're crazy,
Nick, he said, quickly, crazy as hell. I don't know what's
the matter with you, Tom, I inquired, what did you say to
Wilson that afternoon? He stared at me without a word, and I knew
I had guessed right about those missing hours. I started to turn away,
but he took a step after me and grabbed my arm. I told him
the truth. He said he came to the door while we were getting ready
to leave, and when I sent down word that we weren't in, he
tried to force his way upstairs. He was crazy enough to kill me if
I hadn't told him who owned the car. His hand was on a revolver
in his pocket every minute he was in the house. He broke off defiantly.
What if I did tell him that Fellow had a coming to him?
He threw dust into your eyes like he did in daisies, But he was
a tough one. He ran over myrtle like you'd run over a dog,
and never even stopped his car. There was nothing I could say except the
one unutterable fact that it wasn't true. And if you think I didn't have
my share of suffering, look here. When I went to give up that
flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard.
I sat down and cried like a baby. By God, it was awful.
I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he
had done was to him entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things in
creatures and then retreated back into their money, or their vast carelessness, or
whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the
mess they had made. I shook hands with him. It seemed silly not
to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child.
Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace, or perhaps
only a pair of cuff buttons. Rid of my provincial squeamishness. Forever,
Gatsby's house was still empty when I left. The grass on his lawn had
grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never
took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside.
Perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gaspy over to East Egg the
night of the accident, and perhaps he hadn't made a story about it all
his own. I didn't want to hear it, and I avoided him when
I got off the train. I spent my Saturday nights in New York,
because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I
could still hear the music in the laughter, faint and incessant from his garden,
and the cars going up and down his drive. One night, I
did hear a material car there and saw its lights stop at his front steps,
but I didn't investigate. Probably it was some final guest who had been
away at the ends of the earth and didn't know that the party was over.
On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to
the grocer, I went over and looked at the huge, incoherent failure of
a house once more. On the white steps. An obscene word scrawled by
some boy with a piece of brick stood out clearly in the moonlight, and
I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone. Then I wandered
down to the beach and sprawled out on the sand. Most of the big
shore places were closed now, and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy
moving glow of a ferryboat across the sound, and as the moon rose higher,
the inessential houses began to melt away, until gradually I became aware of
the old island here that flowered once for Dutch Sailor's eye, a fresh green
breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made
way for Gatsby's house had once pondered in whispers to the last and greatest of
all human dreams. For a transitory, enchanted moment, man must have held
his breath in the presence of this continent, Compelled into an esthetic contemplation.
He neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history,
with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. And as I sat there,
brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he
first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had
come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed
so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know
that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the
city, where the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light the orgas stick future, that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow
we will run faster, stretch out our arms further, and one fine morning
so we beat on boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
End of Chapter nine, End of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald