The Great Gatsby Page #34

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore in 1922

• Fiction
• Novel

								

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
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