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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chapter 6 Part 1

Chapter 6 Part 1

About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say.

“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.

“Why—any statement to give out.”

It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say.

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.

An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Olaf's in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.

Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism in 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay.

To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. And when the Tuolomee left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too.

He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.

And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.

He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.

It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened before.

They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously.

“I'm delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. “I'm delighted that you dropped in.”

As though they cared!

“Sit right down. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. “I'll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”

He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks… I'm sorry—

“Did you have a nice ride?”

“Very good roads around here.”

“I suppose the automobiles—”

“Yeah.”

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.

“I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. “So we did. I remember very well.”

“About two weeks ago.”

“That's right. You were with Nick here.”

“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively.

“That so?”

Tom turned to me.

“You live near here, Nick?”

“Next door.”

“That so?”

Mr. Sloane didn't enter into the conversation, but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial.

“We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested. “What do you say?”

“Certainly; I'd be delighted to have you.”

“Be ver' nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. “Well—think ought to be starting home.”

“Please don't hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don't you—why don't you stay for supper? I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.”

“You come to supper with me,” said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of you.”

This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.

“Come along,” he said—but to her only.

“I mean it,” she insisted. “I'd love to have you. Lots of room.”

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn't see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.

“I'm afraid I won't be able to,” I said.

“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear.

“We won't be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud.

“I haven't got a horse,” said Gatsby. “I used to ride in the army, but I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.”

The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside.

“My God, I believe the man's coming,” said Tom. “Doesn't he know she doesn't want him?”

“She says she does want him.”

“She has a big dinner party and he won't know a soul there.” He frowned. “I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.

“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we're late. We've got to go.” And then to me: “Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?”

Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the front door.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.

Chapter 6 Part 1 Kapitel 6 Teil 1 Capítulo 6 Parte 1 Capitolo 6 Parte 1 第6章 前編 Rozdział 6 Część 1 Capítulo 6 Parte 1 Глава 6 Часть 1 Bölüm 6 Kısım 1 Розділ 6, частина 1 第 6 章 第 1 部分

About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby's door and asked him if he had anything to say. In quel periodo un giovane e ambizioso giornalista di New York si presentò una mattina alla porta di Gatsby e gli chiese se avesse qualcosa da dire.

“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.

“Why—any statement to give out.” "Perché... qualsiasi dichiarazione da rilasciare".

It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby's name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn't reveal or didn't fully understand. Dopo cinque minuti di confusione, emerse che l'uomo aveva sentito il nome di Gatsby nel suo ufficio in una connessione che non voleva rivelare o che non capiva appieno. 困惑的五分钟后,这名男子在他的办公室周围听到了盖茨比的名字,这与他不愿透露或不完全理解的联系有关。 This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.” Era il suo giorno libero e con lodevole iniziativa si era affrettato a "vedere".

It was a random shot, and yet the reporter's instinct was right. È stato un colpo casuale, eppure l'istinto del giornalista era giusto. Gatsby's notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities upon his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. La notorietà di Gatsby, diffusa dalle centinaia di persone che avevano accettato la sua ospitalità diventando così autorità sul suo passato, era aumentata per tutta l'estate fino a sfiorare la notizia. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipeline to Canada” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. A lui si legano leggende contemporanee come quella del "gasdotto sotterraneo per il Canada" e una storia insistente racconta che non viveva affatto in una casa, ma in una barca che sembrava una casa e che veniva spostata segretamente su e giù per la costa di Long Island. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn't easy to say. Non è facile dire perché queste invenzioni siano state fonte di soddisfazione per James Gatz del North Dakota.

James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. James Gatz - questo era il suo vero nome, o almeno legalmente. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody's yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. L'aveva cambiata all'età di diciassette anni e nel momento specifico che ha visto l'inizio della sua carriera: quando ha visto lo yacht di Dan Cody gettare l'ancora sulla piana più insidiosa del Lago Superiore. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the __Tuolomee__, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour. Era James Gatz che quel pomeriggio stava oziando lungo la spiaggia con una maglia verde strappata e un paio di pantaloni di tela, ma era già Jay Gatsby che aveva preso in prestito una barca a remi, si era avvicinato al Tuolomee e aveva informato Cody che il vento avrebbe potuto catturarlo e farlo crollare in mezz'ora.

I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. Suppongo che avesse già pronto il nome da molto tempo. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. I suoi genitori erano dei contadini senza prospettive e di scarso successo: la sua immaginazione non li aveva mai accettati come suoi genitori. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. Era un figlio di Dio - un'espressione che, se significa qualcosa, significa proprio questo - e doveva occuparsi degli affari di suo Padre, il servizio di una bellezza vasta, volgare e meritevole. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. Così inventò proprio il tipo di Jay Gatsby che un ragazzo di diciassette anni avrebbe potuto inventare, e a questa concezione fu fedele fino alla fine.

For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. Per più di un anno si era fatto strada lungo la sponda meridionale del Lago Superiore come scavatore di vongole e pescatore di salmoni o in qualsiasi altra attività che gli portasse cibo e un letto. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. Il suo corpo bruno e indurito viveva con naturalezza il lavoro mezzo feroce e mezzo pigro di quei giorni di fuoco. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted. Conobbe presto le donne e, poiché lo viziavano, ne divenne sprezzante, delle giovani vergini perché ignoranti, delle altre perché isteriche per cose che, nel suo smisurato egocentrismo, dava per scontate.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. Ma il suo cuore era in costante e turbolento tumulto. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. Le idee più grottesche e fantastiche lo perseguitavano nel suo letto di notte. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Un universo di ineffabile sontuosità gli si dipanava nel cervello mentre l'orologio ticchettava sul lavabo e la luna impregnava di luce umida i suoi vestiti aggrovigliati sul pavimento. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. Ogni notte aggiungeva un motivo alle sue fantasie, finché la sonnolenza non si chiudeva su qualche scena vivida con un abbraccio ignaro. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing. Per un po' queste fantasticherie fornirono uno sfogo alla sua immaginazione; erano un accenno soddisfacente all'irrealtà della realtà, una promessa che la roccia del mondo era fondata saldamente sull'ala di una fata.

An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran College of St. Un istinto verso la sua futura gloria lo aveva condotto, alcuni mesi prima, al piccolo Collegio luterano di St. Olaf's in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor's work with which he was to pay his way through. Vi rimase due settimane, sgomento per la sua feroce indifferenza ai tamburi del suo destino, al destino stesso, e disprezzando il lavoro di bidello con cui doveva pagarsi il passaggio. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody's yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore. Poi tornò alla deriva sul Lago Superiore, ed era ancora alla ricerca di qualcosa da fare il giorno in cui lo yacht di Dan Cody gettò l'ancora nelle secche lungo la costa.

Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. Cody aveva allora cinquant'anni, un prodotto dei campi d'argento del Nevada, dello Yukon, di ogni corsa al metallo dal settantacinque in poi. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. Le transazioni in rame del Montana, che lo resero più volte milionario, lo trovarono fisicamente robusto ma al limite del rammollito e, sospettandolo, un numero infinito di donne cercò di separarlo dal suo denaro. The none too savoury ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common property of the turgid journalism in 1902. Le ramificazioni non troppo gustose con cui Ella Kaye, la donna del giornale, si è presa gioco di Madame de Maintenon per la sua debolezza e l'ha mandato in mare su uno yacht, erano patrimonio comune del turgido giornalismo del 1902. Ella Kaye,女报社,利用 de Maintenon 夫人的弱点,让他乘游艇出海,这种不太好听的后果是 1902 年浮夸的新闻业的共同财产。 He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay. Da cinque anni stava costeggiando lidi fin troppo ospitali quando si presentò come il destino di James Gatz a Little Girl Bay.

To young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, that yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. Per il giovane Gatz, appoggiato ai remi e con lo sguardo rivolto verso il ponte a ringhiera, quello yacht rappresentava tutta la bellezza e il fascino del mondo. I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. Suppongo che abbia sorriso a Cody: probabilmente aveva scoperto che alla gente piaceva quando sorrideva. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious. Ad ogni modo, Cody gli fece alcune domande (da una delle quali emerse il nome nuovo di zecca) e scoprì che era veloce e stravagantemente ambizioso. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pairs of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. Pochi giorni dopo lo portò a Duluth e gli comprò un cappotto blu, sei paia di pantaloni d'anatra bianchi e un berretto da barca. And when the __Tuolomee__ left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby left too.

He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. Era impiegato in una vaga veste personale: finché rimase con Cody fu a turno steward, mate, skipper, segretario e persino carceriere, perché Dan Cody sobrio sapeva quali sfarzose azioni Dan Cody ubriaco avrebbe potuto compiere di lì a poco, e si premunì di tali eventualità riponendo sempre più fiducia in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. L'accordo durò cinque anni, durante i quali la barca fece tre volte il giro del continente. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died. Avrebbe potuto durare all'infinito, se non fosse che una notte a Boston salì a bordo Ella Kaye e una settimana dopo Dan Cody morì in modo inospitale.

I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. Ricordo il suo ritratto nella camera da letto di Gatsby, un uomo grigio e florido con una faccia dura e vuota, il pioniere del dissolutezza, che durante una fase della vita americana riportò sulla costa orientale la violenza selvaggia del bordello e del saloon di frontiera. 我记得他在盖茨比卧室里的画像,一个灰色、红润的男人,一张冷酷、空洞的脸——先锋浪荡子,在美国生活的某个阶段,他把边境妓院和酒馆的野蛮暴力带回了东部沿海地区。 It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. È stato indirettamente a causa di Cody che Gatsby ha bevuto così poco. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone. A volte, nel corso di feste allegre, le donne gli spalmavano lo champagne sui capelli; per sé aveva preso l'abitudine di lasciar perdere gli alcolici.

And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. E proprio da Cody ha ereditato il denaro: un lascito di venticinquemila dollari. He didn't get it. Non l'ha capito. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. Non capì mai l'espediente legale usato contro di lui, ma ciò che restava dei milioni andò intatto a Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man. Era rimasto con la sua educazione singolarmente appropriata; il vago contorno di Jay Gatsby si era riempito fino a diventare un uomo. 他只接受了特别合适的教育。杰伊·盖茨比 (Jay Gatsby) 模糊的轮廓已经充满了一个男人的实体。

He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumours about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true. Mi ha raccontato tutto questo molto più tardi, ma l'ho riportato qui con l'idea di far esplodere le prime voci selvagge sui suoi antecedenti, che non erano nemmeno lontanamente vere. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. Inoltre, me lo disse in un momento di confusione, quando ero arrivato al punto di credere a tutto e a niente di lui. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away. Approfitto quindi di questa breve pausa, mentre Gatsby, per così dire, riprende fiato, per eliminare questa serie di idee sbagliate. 所以我利用这次短暂的停顿,而盖茨比,可以说,屏住呼吸,以消除这些误解。

It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. È stata una battuta d'arresto anche per quanto riguarda la mia associazione con i suoi affari. 这也停止了我与他的事务的联系。 For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon. Per diverse settimane non lo vidi e non sentii la sua voce al telefono - per la maggior parte ero a New York, a trotterellare con Jordan e a cercare di ingraziarmi la zia rimbambita - ma alla fine una domenica pomeriggio andai a casa sua. I hadn't been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. Non ero lì da due minuti quando qualcuno portò Tom Buchanan a bere qualcosa. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened before. Naturalmente sono rimasto sorpreso, ma la cosa davvero sorprendente è che non era mai successo prima.

They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding-habit, who had been there previously. Erano in tre a cavallo: Tom, un uomo di nome Sloane e una bella donna in tenuta da equitazione marrone, che erano già stati lì in precedenza. 他们一行三人骑在马背上——汤姆和一个名叫斯隆的男人,还有一个穿着棕色马装的漂亮女人,她以前来过那里。

“I'm delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. "Sono felice di vederla", disse Gatsby, in piedi sulla veranda. “I'm delighted that you dropped in.” "Mi fa piacere che sia passato di qui".

As though they cared! Come se a loro importasse!

“Sit right down. "Siediti pure. Have a cigarette or a cigar.” He walked around the room quickly, ringing bells. “I'll have something to drink for you in just a minute.”

He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. Il fatto che Tom fosse lì lo aveva profondamente colpito. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Ma sarebbe stato comunque a disagio finché non avesse dato loro qualcosa, rendendosi conto in modo vago che erano venuti solo per quello. Mr. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks… I'm sorry—

“Did you have a nice ride?”

“Very good roads around here.”

“I suppose the automobiles—”

“Yeah.”

Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom, who had accepted the introduction as a stranger. Mosso da un impulso irresistibile, Gatsby si rivolse a Tom, che aveva accettato la presentazione come un estraneo.

“I believe we've met somewhere before, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, gruffly polite, but obviously not remembering. "Oh, sì", disse Tom, burberamente educato, ma evidentemente non ricordava. “So we did. I remember very well.”

“About two weeks ago.”

“That's right. You were with Nick here.”

“I know your wife,” continued Gatsby, almost aggressively. "Conosco sua moglie", continuò Gatsby, quasi con aggressività.

“That so?” "E' così?"

Tom turned to me.

“You live near here, Nick?” "Vivi qui vicino, Nick?"

“Next door.”

“That so?”

Mr. Sloane didn't enter into the conversation, but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial. Mr. Sloane non partecipò alla conversazione, ma si adagiò altezzoso sulla sua sedia; anche la donna non disse nulla, fino a quando, inaspettatamente, dopo due highball, divenne cordiale.

“We'll all come over to your next party, Mr. Gatsby,” she suggested. "Verremo tutti alla sua prossima festa, signor Gatsby", suggerì lei. “What do you say?”

“Certainly; I'd be delighted to have you.”

“Be ver' nice,” said Mr. Sloane, without gratitude. “Well—think ought to be starting home.”

“Please don't hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don't you—why don't you stay for supper? I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.” Non mi stupirei se arrivassero altre persone da New York".

“You come to supper with __me__,” said the lady enthusiastically. “Both of you.”

This included me. Mr. Sloane got to his feet.

“Come along,” he said—but to her only. "Vieni", disse, ma solo a lei.

“I mean it,” she insisted. "Dico sul serio", insistette lei. “I'd love to have you. "Mi piacerebbe averti. “我很想拥有你。 Lots of room.” C'è molto spazio". 房间很大。”

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. Gatsby mi guardò con aria interrogativa. He wanted to go and he didn't see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't. Voleva andare e non vedeva che il signor Sloane aveva deciso di non farlo. 他想去,但他没看出 Sloane 先生已经下定决心不去。

“I'm afraid I won't be able to,” I said. "Temo di non poterlo fare", dissi.

“Well, you come,” she urged, concentrating on Gatsby. "Beh, vieni tu", esortò lei, concentrandosi su Gatsby.

Mr. Sloane murmured something close to her ear. Il signor Sloane mormorò qualcosa vicino al suo orecchio.

“We won't be late if we start now,” she insisted aloud. "Non faremo tardi se iniziamo adesso", insistette ad alta voce.

“I haven't got a horse,” said Gatsby. "Non ho un cavallo", disse Gatsby. “I used to ride in the army, but I've never bought a horse. I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute.”

The rest of us walked out on the porch, where Sloane and the lady began an impassioned conversation aside. Il resto di noi uscì nel portico, dove Sloane e la signora iniziarono una conversazione appassionata a parte.

“My God, I believe the man's coming,” said Tom. "Mio Dio, credo che l'uomo stia arrivando", disse Tom. “Doesn't he know she doesn't want him?” "Non sa che lei non lo vuole?".

“She says she does want him.” "Dice che lo vuole davvero".

“She has a big dinner party and he won't know a soul there.” He frowned. "Lei ha una grande cena e lui non conoscerà nessuno". Si accigliò. “I wonder where in the devil he met Daisy. "Mi chiedo dove diavolo abbia incontrato Daisy. By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. Per Dio, sarò anche all'antica nelle mie idee, ma le donne corrono troppo al giorno d'oggi per essere adatte a me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.”

Suddenly Mr. Sloane and the lady walked down the steps and mounted their horses.

“Come on,” said Mr. Sloane to Tom, “we're late. We've got to go.” And then to me: “Tell him we couldn't wait, will you?” Dobbiamo andare". E poi a me: "Digli che non potevamo aspettare, ti dispiace?".

Tom and I shook hands, the rest of us exchanged a cool nod, and they trotted quickly down the drive, disappearing under the August foliage just as Gatsby, with hat and light overcoat in hand, came out the front door. Io e Tom ci stringemmo la mano, noialtri ci scambiammo un freddo cenno di saluto e loro trotterellarono velocemente lungo il viale, scomparendo sotto il fogliame d'agosto proprio mentre Gatsby, con cappello e soprabito leggero in mano, usciva dalla porta principale.

Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Tom was evidently perturbed at Daisy's running around alone, for on the following Saturday night he came with her to Gatsby's party. Tom era evidentemente infastidito dal fatto che Daisy andasse in giro da sola, perché il sabato sera successivo andò con lei alla festa di Gatsby. Perhaps his presence gave the evening its peculiar quality of oppressiveness—it stands out in my memory from Gatsby's other parties that summer. Forse la sua presenza ha dato alla serata la sua peculiare qualità di oppressività: nella mia memoria si distingue dalle altre feste di Gatsby di quell'estate. There were the same people, or at least the same sort of people, the same profusion of champagne, the same many-coloured, many-keyed commotion, but I felt an unpleasantness in the air, a pervading harshness that hadn't been there before. C'erano le stesse persone, o almeno lo stesso tipo di persone, la stessa profusione di champagne, la stessa confusione variopinta e multiforme, ma sentivo una sgradevolezza nell'aria, una durezza pervasiva che non c'era stata prima. 那里有同样的人,或者至少是同样种类的人,同样的香槟酒,同样的五光十色、多调的骚动,但我感到空气中有一种不愉快,一种从未有过的刺耳的弥漫在空气中前。 Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. O forse mi ero semplicemente abituata, avevo accettato West Egg come un mondo a sé stante, con i suoi standard e le sue grandi figure, non secondario perché non aveva coscienza di esserlo, e ora lo guardavo di nuovo, attraverso gli occhi di Daisy. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. È sempre triste guardare con occhi nuovi cose per le quali si è speso il proprio potere di adattamento.