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‘Do you mean you’re in love with Miss Baker?’
‘No, old sport, I’m not. But Miss Baker has kindly consented to speak to you about this matter.’
I hadn’t the faintest idea what ‘this matter’ was, but I was more a
He wouldn’t say another word. His correctness grew on him as we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded-gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.
With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria[60] – only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar ‘jug-jug-spat!’ of a motorcycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside.
‘All right, old sport,’ called Gatsby. We slowed down. Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes.
‘Right you are,’ agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. ‘Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!’
‘What was that?’ I inquired. ‘The picture of Oxford?’
‘I was able to do the commissioner a favour once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year.’
Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of nonolfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge[61] is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds, and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their sombre holiday. As we crossed Blackwell’s Island[62] a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.
‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all…’
Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
Roaring noon. In a well-fa
‘Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.’
A small, flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half-darkness.
‘So I took one look at him,’ said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, ‘and what do you think I did?’
‘What?’ I inquired politely.
But evidently he was not addressing me, for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
‘I handed the money to Katspaugh and I said: “All right, Katspaugh, don’t pay him a pe
Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant, whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
‘Highballs[63]?’ asked the head waiter.
‘This is a nice restaurant here,’ said Mr. Wolfshiem, looking at the Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling. ‘But I like across the street better!’
‘Yes, highballs,’ agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: ‘It’s too hot over there.’
‘Hot and small – yes,’ said Mr. Wolfshiem, ‘but full of memories.’
‘What place is that?’ I asked.
‘The old Metropole.’
‘The old Metropole,’ brooded Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. ‘Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can’t forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table, and Rosy had eaten and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a fu
“Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don’t you, so help me, move outside this room.”
‘It was four o’clock in the morning then, and if we’d of raised the blinds we’d of seen daylight.’
‘Did he go?’ I asked i
‘Sure he went.’ Mr. Wolfshiem’s nose flashed at me indignantly. ‘He turned around in the door and says:
“Don’t let that waiter take away my coffee!” Then he went out on the sidewalk, and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.’
‘Four of them were electrocuted,’ I said, remembering.
‘Five, with Beeker.’ His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. ‘I understand you’re looking for a business go
The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me:
‘Oh, no,’ he exclaimed, ‘this isn’t the man.’
‘No?’ Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
‘This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other time.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Wolfshiem, ‘I had a wrong man.’
A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room – he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table.
‘Look here, old sport,’ said Gatsby, leaning toward me, ‘I’m afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car.’
There was the smile again, but this time I held out against it.
‘I don’t like mysteries,’ I answered, ‘and I don’t understand why you won’t come out frankly and tell me what you want. Why has it all got to come through Miss Baker?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing underhand,’ he assured me. ‘Miss Baker’s a great sportswoman, you know, and she’d never do anything that wasn’t all right.’
Suddenly he looked at his watch, jumped up, and hurried from the room, leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
‘He has to telephone,’ said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes. ‘Fine fellow, isn’t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s an Oggsford man.’
‘Oh!’
‘He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s one of the most famous colleges in the world.’
‘Have you known Gatsby for a long time?’ I inquired.
‘Several years,’ he answered in a gratified way. ‘I made the pleasure of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself: “There’s the kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.”’ He paused. ‘I see you’re looking at my cuff buttons.’
I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of oddly familiar pieces of ivory.
‘Finest specimens of human molars,’ he informed me.
‘Well!’ I inspected them. ‘That’s a very interesting idea.’
60
Astoria – a commercial, industrial and residential area on Long Island
61
the Queensboro Bridge – the bridge over the East River in New York City
62
Blackwell’s Island – the former name of Roosevelt Island on the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens in New York City
63
highballs – highball is a cocktail of whisky mixed with soda and ice, served in a tall glass