But they didn't. And we all took the less explicable step of engaging the parlour of a suite in the Plaza Hotel.
The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. The notion originated with Daisy's suggestion that we hire five bathrooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as 'a place to have a mint julep'. Each of us said over and over that it was a 'crazy idea' - we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny...
The room was large and stifling, and, though it was already four o'clock, opening the windows admitted only a gust of hot shrubbery from the Park. Daisy went to the mirror and stood with her back to us, fixing her hair.
'It's a swell suite,' whispered Jordan respectfully, and everyone laughed.
'Open another window,' commanded Daisy, without turning around.
'There aren't any more.'
'Well, we'd better telephone for an axe -'
'The thing to do is to forget about the heat,' said Tom impatiently. 'You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.'
He unrolled the bottle of whisky from the towel and put it on the table.
'Why not let her alone, old sport?' remarked Gatsby. 'You're the one that wanted to come to town.'
There was a moment of silence. The telephone book slipped from its nail and splashed to the floor, whereupon Jordan whispered, 'Excuse me' - but this time no one laughed.
'I'll pick it up,' I offered.
'I've got it.' Gatsby examined the parted string, muttered 'Hum!' in an interested way, and tossed the book on a chair.
'That's a great expression of yours, isn't it?' said Tom sharply.
'What is?'
'All this "old sport" business. Where'd you pick that up?'
'Now see here, Tom,' said Daisy, turning around from the mirror, 'if you're going to make personal remarks I won't stay here a minute. Call up and order some ice for the mint julep.'
As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below.
'Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!' cried Jordan dismally.
'Still - I was married in the middle of June,' Daisy remembered. 'Louisville in June! Somebody fainted. Who was it fainted, Tom?'
'Biloxi,' he answered shortly.
'A man named Biloxi. "Blocks" Biloxi, and he made boxes - that's a fact - and he was from Biloxi, Tennessee.'
'They carried him into my house,' appended Jordan, 'because we lived just two doors from the church. And he stayed three weeks, until Daddy told him he had to get out. The day after he left Daddy died.' After a moment she added. 'There wasn't any connection.'
'I used to know a Bill Biloxi from Memphis,' I remarked.
'That was his cousin. I knew his whole family history before he left. He gave me an aluminium putter that I use today.'
The music had died down as the ceremony began and now a long cheer floated in at the window, followed by intermittent cries of 'Yea - ea - ea!' and finally by a burst of jazz as the dancing began.
'we're getting old,' said Daisy. 'If we were young we'd rise and dance.'
'Remember Biloxi,' Jordan warned her. 'Where'd you know him, Tom?'
'Biloxi?' He concentrated with an effort. 'I didn't know him. He was a friend of Daisy's.'
'He was not,' she denied. 'I'd never seen him before. He came down in the private car.'
'Well, he said he knew you. He said he was raised in Louisville. Asa Bird brought him around at the last minute and asked if we had room for him.'
Jordan smiled.
'He was probably bumming his way home. He told me he was president of your class at Yale.'
Tom and I looked at each other blankly.
'Biloxi?'
'First place, we didn't have any president - '
Gatsby's foot beat a short, restless tattoo and Tom eyed him suddenly.
'By the way, Mr Gatsby, I understand you're an Oxford man.'
'Not exactly.'
'Oh, yes, I understand you went to Oxford.'
'Yes - I went there.'
A pause. Then Tom's voice, incredulous and insulting:
'You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.'
Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but the silence was unbroken by his 'thank you' and the soft closing of the door. This tremendous detail was to be cleared up at last.
'I told you I went there,' said Gatsby.
'I heard you, but I'd like to know when.'
'It was in nineteen-nineteen, I only stayed five months. That's why I can't really call myself an Oxford man.'
Tom glanced around to see if we mirrored his unbelief. But we were all looking at Gatsby.
'It was an opportunity they gave to some of the officers after the armistice,' he continued. 'We could go to any of the universities in England or France.'
I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I'd experienced before.
Daisy rose, smiling faintly, and went to the table.
'Open the whisky, Tom,' she ordered, 'and I'll make you a mint julep. Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself... Look at the mint!'
'Wait a minute,' snapped Tom, 'I want to ask Mr Gatsby one more question.'
'Go on,' Gatsby said politely.
'What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?'
They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content.
'He isn't causing a row,' Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. 'You're causing a row. Please have a little self-control.'
'Self-control!' repeated Tom incredulously. 'I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out... Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.'
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
'we're all white here,' murmured Jordan.
'I know I'm not very popular. I don't give big parties. I suppose you've got to make your house into a pigsty in order to have any friends - in the modern world.'
Angry as I was, as we all were, I was tempted to laugh whenever he opened his mouth. The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.
'I've got something to tell you, old sport - ' began Gatsby. But Daisy guessed at his intention.
'Please don't!' she interrupted helplessly. 'Please let's all go home. Why don't we all go home?'
'That's a good idea,' I got up. 'Come on, Tom. Nobody wants a drink.'
'I want to know what Mr Gatsby has to tell me.'
'Your wife doesn't love you,' said Gatsby. 'She's never loved you. She loves me.'
'You must be crazy!' exclaimed Tom automatically.
Gatsby sprang to his feet, vivid with excitement.
'She never loved you, do you hear?' he cried. 'She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!'
At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain - as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.
'Sit down, Daisy,' Tom's voice groped unsuccessfully for the paternal note. 'What's been going on? I want to hear all about it.'
'I told you what's been going on,' said Gatsby. 'Going on for five years - and you didn't know.'
Tom turned to Daisy sharply.
'You've been seeing this fellow for f
ive years?'
'Not seeing,' said Gatsby. 'No, we could't meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn't know. I used to laugh sometimes' - but there was no laughter in his eyes - 'to think that you didn't know.'
'Oh - that's all.' Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman and leaned back in his chair.
'You're crazy!' he exploded. 'I can't speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn't know Daisy then - and I'll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that's a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.'
'No,' said Gatsby, shaking his head.
'She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and does't know what she's doing.' He nodded sagely. 'And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.'
'You're revolting,' said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrilling scorn: 'Do you know why we left Chicago? I'm surprised that they didn't treat you to the story of that little spree.'
Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
'Daisy, that's all over now,' he said earnestly. 'It does't matter any more. Just tell him the truth - that you never loved him - and it's all wiped out forever.'
She looked at him blindly. 'Why - how could I love him - possibly?'
'You never loved him.'
She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing - and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.
'I never loved him,' she said, with perceptible reluctance.
'Not at Kapiolani?' demanded Tom suddenly.36
'No.'
From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.
'Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?'37 There was a husky tenderness in his tone... 'Daisy?'
'Please don't.' Her voice was cold, but the rancor was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. 'There, Jay,' she said - but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling. Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.
'Oh, you want too much!' she cried to Gatsby. 'I love you now - isn't that enough? I can't help what's past.' She began to sob helplessly. 'I did love him once - but I loved you too.'
Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.
'You loved me too?' he repeated.
'Even that's a lie,' said Tom savagely. 'She didn't know you were alive. Why - there's things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.'
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
'I want to speak to Daisy alone,' he insisted. 'She's all excited now - '
'Even alone I can't say I never loved Tom,' she admitted in a pitiful voice. 'It wouldn't be true.'
'Of course it wouldn't,' agreed Tom.
She turned to her husband.
'As if it mattered to you,' she said.
'Of course it matters. I'm going to take better care of you from now on.'
'You don't understand,' said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. 'You're not going to take care of her any more.'
'I'm not?' Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. 'Why's that?'
'Daisy's leaving you.'
'Nonsense.'
'I am, though,' she said with a visible effort.
'She's not leaving me!' Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby. 'Certainly not for a common swindler who'd have to steal the ring he put on her finger.'
'I won't stand this!' cried Daisy. 'Oh, please let's get out.'
'Who are you, anyhow?' broke out Tom. 'You're one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem - that much I happen to know. I've made a little investigation into your affairs - and I'll carry it further tomorrow.'
'You can suit yourself about that, old sport,' said Gatsby steadily.
'I found out what your "drug-stores" were.'38 He turned to us and spoke rapidly. 'He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasn't far wrong.'
'What about it?' said Gatsby politely. 'I guess your friend Walter Chase wasn't too proud to come in on it.'
'And you left him in the lurch, didn't you? You let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject of you.'
'He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport.'
'Don't you call me "old sport"!' cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing. 'Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.'
That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsby's face.
'That drug-store business was just small change,' continued Tom slowly, 'but you've got something on now that Walter's afraid to tell me about.'
I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby - and was startled at his expression. He looked - and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden - as if he had 'killed a man'. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
The voice begged again to go.
'Please, Tom! I can't stand this any more.'
Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone.
'You two start on home, Daisy,' said Tom. 'In Mr Gatsby's car.'
She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
'Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.'
They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.
After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whisky in the towel.
'Want any of this stuff? Jordan?... Nick?'
I didn't answer.
'Nick?' He asked again.
'What?'
'Want any?'
'No... I just remembered that today's my birthday.'
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.
It was seven o'clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty - the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the ashheaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept through the heat until after five, when he
strolled over to the garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office - really sick, pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that he'd miss a lot of business if he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent racket broke out overhead.
'I've got my wife locked in up there,' explained Wilson calmly. 'She's going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then we're going to move away.'
Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement. Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn't working, he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wife's man and not his own.
So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson wouldn't say a word - instead he began to throw curious, suspicious glances at his visitor and ask him what he'd been doing at certain times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he didn't. He supposed he forgot to, that's all. When he came outside again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation because he heard Mrs Wilson's voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.
'Beat me!' he heard her cry. 'Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!'
A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting - before he could move from his door the business was over.
The 'death car' as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Mavro-michaelis wasn't even sure of its colour - he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust.
Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.
The Great Gatsby Page 16
