The Great Gatsby Page #36

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

								

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 Wolfshiem,
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 Mr. Wolfshiem
arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and
newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem’s answer I began
to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby
and me against them all.

 Dear Mr. Carraway. 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 is anything I can do a little
 later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when
 I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and
 out.

                               Yours truly

                             Meyer Wolfshiem

and then hasty 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 Slagle speaking …”

“Yes?” The name was unfamiliar.

“Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?”

“There haven’t been any wires.”

“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up when
he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New
York giving ’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know
about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns—”

“Hello!” I interrupted breathlessly. “Look here—this isn’t Mr.
Gatsby. Mr. 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. Gatz
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
grey 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 saw it in the Chicago newspaper,” he said. “It was all in the
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. “He must have been mad.”

“Wouldn’t you like some coffee?” I urged him.

“I don’t want anything. I’m all right now, Mr.—”

“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 Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth
ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and
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 splendour of the hall and the great
rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be
mixed with an awed 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, Mr. Gatsby—”

“Gatz is my name.”

“—Mr. Gatz. 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 boy’s, Mr.—?”

“We were close friends.”

“He had a big future before him, 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 of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J.
Hill. He’d of 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 would give his name.

“This is Mr. Carraway,” I said.

“Oh!” He sounded relieved. “This is Klipspringer.”

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 funeral’s 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’ll 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 an 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,
they’re 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
Wolfshiem; 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
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