CHAPTER FOUR

Daisy and Gatsby

Gatsby's fancy car drove up to my door one morning in July. He never visited me before, though I had already attended two parties at his house, flown with him in his seaplane once and sat on his private beach often.

"Good morning, young fellow. Would you like to drive into New York today and have lunch with me? I thought we could drive into the city together."

Gatsby saw me admiring his beautiful car.

"It's pretty, isn't it? You've seen it before, haven't you?"

Of course, I'd seen it. Everybody in West Egg had seen it. It was bright yellow, with green leather seats. We jumped in and quickly drove off.

I had talked with Gatsby many times in the past month. I was disappointed to find out that he did not have much interesting to say. When I first met him I felt that he was a very important person, a person who would help to change the world. Now this feeling disappeared. Now he was just the man who owned the big, fancy house next door.

My feelings about him changed when we took this ride. It was a very surprising ride. As we talked, he seemed full of doubt and very strange, and he began to speak in broken sentences. "Look here, young fellow," he finally said, "Tell me the truth. What is your opinion of me?"

I began to say some common things that would not make him happy or angry.

"Well, I want to tell you something about myself," he said. "I don't want you to think bad things about me because of all the stories people say about me. I will tell you the true story."

"I was born in the Middle West. My parents were wealthy people, but they are all dead now. I grew up in America, but was educated in England at Oxford University, because all the men in my family always went to Oxford."

He looked at me in a strange way—and I understood why Miss Baker had thought he was lying about attending Oxford. It was because he said "educated at Oxford" too quickly; he said it so that I did not have any time to question him.

"After my family all died, I received a lot of money. Since then I have lived like a king in all of the capitals of Europe Paris, Rome, Venice. I spent time buying jewels and hunting wild animals; I even painted a little. Mostly I tried to forget something very sad that happened to me a long time ago."

I didn't believe what he was saying and I wanted to laugh at him, but, to be polite, I was silent.

"Then the war started, young fellow. I was happy, and I tried very hard to die; I always ran to the front of the fighting, but some luck or magic always seemed to keep me alive. I became a captain when the war began, and I led a group of machine-gun soldiers. In the forests of Germany I led my men far in front of the other soldiers. We fought there for two days and two nights, and we killed more than a hundred and thirty Germans. When the other American soldiers finally found us, they saw piles of dead Germans everywhere. After that every government in Europe, and America also, gave me a medal."

Gatsby then reached into his pocket and pulled out a war medal.

"This medal is the one from the government of Montenegro."

I was shocked, the medal looked real. On the medal was written "Major Jay Gatsby—For Courage in Battle."

"Here's another thing that I always carry. It is a picture to remember my life at Oxford University."

He handed me a photograph of five or six young men standing together. In the background were two towers. Gatsby was in the middle; he looked a little younger, but it was definitely Gatsby.

Suddenly I believed him, everything he said was true! I imagined his palace in Rome; I imagined him hunting; I imagined him staring into a box of expensive, dark jewels and trying to forget the pain in his broken heart.

"Today I want to ask you to help me," he said, "so I thought you should know more about my life." For a minute he stopped speaking.

"I won't tell you now. You'll hear about it later."

"At lunch?"

"No, later this afternoon. I found out that you are planning to have tea with Jordan Baker after lunch."

"Do you mean that you are in love with Miss Baker?" I asked surprised.

"No, young fellow, I'm not. However, Miss Baker will speak to you about this affair."

I did not know what "this affair" was, but I was annoyed at Gatsby. I was not going to tea with Jordan so that we could discuss Mr Jay Gatsby.

Gatsby would not say another word about what he wanted. We continued driving. As we passed the dirty train tracks I saw Mrs Wilson fixing a car with her usual animal energy.

Gatsby was driving quite fast.

After a moment I heard the sound of a motorcycle. A policeman rode up next to us and Gatsby stopped the car. He then pulled a white card out of his pocket and handed it to the policeman.

"Excuse me, Mr Gatsby!" said the policeman when he looked at the card. "I'll know that this car is yours next time. Sorry to trouble you!" The policeman then rode away.

"What did you show him?" I asked. "Was it the picture of you at Oxford?"

"No, I helped the Chief of Police before, and he sends me a card every year at Christmas."

Gatsby and I stopped for lunch at a little restaurant in the middle of the city. Another man came to meet us. He was a small man with small eyes and a flat nose; he looked about forty years old.

"Mr Carraway, let me introduce my friend Mr Wolfshiem."

We sat down and ordered some food.

"I like this restaurant," said Mr Wolfshiem. "But the restaurant across the street is even better."

"It's too hot there," said Gatsby.

"Yes, it's hot and small. But it is also full of memories. It makes me think about dead friends. I will never forget sitting in that restaurant the night that Rosy Rosenthal was shot. Six friends were all sitting at the table, and Rosy had been drinking beer and eating all the evening. At four-thirty in the morning a waiter came over to Rosy with a strange look on his face. He said that somebody wanted to talk with him outside. It sounded strange, so I told him not to go."

"Did he go?" I asked.

"Yes, he went. Before going out the door he turned around and said to me 'Don't let the waiter take away my coffee.' Then he went outside into the street, and we heard gunshots. Some men had shot him four times in his chest and ran away."

He suddenly looked at me and said, "I heard that you are looking for a connection in business."

Gatsby quickly answered for me. "No, Meyer, this is a different man! We'll talk about that business some other time."

Before we finished eating our meal Gatsby looked at his watch, jumped up and hurried out of the room.

"He has to use the telephone," said Mr Wolfshiem. "It's a business matter. He's a fine young fellow, isn't he? A true gentleman, he went to Oxford University in England."

"Have you known him for a long time?" I asked.

"Yes, for many years. I met him a little bit after the war, and we have done a lot of business together—He's helped me and I've helped him."

When Gatsby returned, Wolfshiem stood up.

"I have to go. I will leave you two young men to discuss your young ladies and sports," he said. I stood up and we shook hands.

"Meyer Wolfshiem is an important man in this area," said Gatsby after Wolfshiem left.

"What's his business? How did he make all his money?"

"Oh, in many ways—" Gatsby said while looking at the ground. "Do you remember the big baseball cheat in 1919? Meyer did that; he cheated a lot of people into giving him money. He really became rich from it."

I was shocked. "Why isn't he in prison?"

"They can't prove that he did it, young fellow. He is a clever man."

I insisted on paying for lunch. When the waiter came over I saw Tom Buchanan across the room.

"Come with me for a minute," I said to Gatsby. "I have to say hello to a friend."

Tom jumped up eagerly when he saw us. "What have you been doing recently?" he said. "Daisy is angry because you haven't called."

"Sorry." I said, "This is my friend Mr Gatsby."

They shook hands. A strange and troubled look appeared on Gatsby's face.

"Why are you here?" Tom demanded of me. "How did you to come this far just to eat?"

"I was having lunch with Mr Gatsby here—"

I turned towards Mr Gatsby, but he had left.

Later that afternoon, I went to tea with Jordan Baker. She told me this story:

The story was in Louisville, the small town where she was a child; the time was when the United States joined the Great War.

Jordan began telling her story, "In October of 1917, I was walking down the street where Daisy Fay house was. She was eighteen then, and I was sixteen. She was the most popular young girl in all of Louisville and I greatly admired her. She usually dressed in white, and she had a little white car. All day long the telephone in her house rang and many excited young army captains asked to take her out to dinner and dancing that night.

That day I saw her outside, sitting in her car. She was sitting with a man I had never seen before; he was a captain in the army. They were so interested in each other that she didn't see me until I was very close to her.

"Hello, Jordan," she called. "Please come over here."

She asked me if I was going to the factory to sew things for the soldiers. I was. She then asked me if I would tell the factory that she was busy and could not come to work that day. While she was speaking to me, the young man looked at her the way that all the young girls wanted men to look at them. The man's name was Jay Gatsby, and after that day I didn't see him again for a long time—more than four years—even after I went to parties at his house and met him again, I still didn't realize it was the man in the car with Daisy.

That was in 1917. By the next year I also had young men who were interested in me. I started to play in golf competitions, and I didn't see Daisy very often. I heard a story that her mother had found her preparing to leave her house one night to go to New York and say goodbye to a soldier who was going away to France to fight. Of course they stopped her from going.

She was unhappy for a while, but by the next fall she was again happy, very happy. In February I heard that she was going to get married and in June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago. Their wedding was the most fancy wedding that had ever happened in Louisville. Tom drove down to Louisville with a hundred friends in four private buses. He even rented a whole floor of a hotel and the day before the wedding he gave her some jewels that cost three hundred thousand dollars.

I was Daisy's helper at the wedding. Strangely, the night before the wedding I could not find her. Finally I came into her room half an hour before the big dinner party. I found her lying on her bed; she was as lovely as a flower and as drunk as a monkey. In one hand she had an empty bottle of wine and her other hand grasped a letter.

"I've never drank wine before," she said.

"What's wrong, Daisy?" I asked. I was worried because I'd never seen a girl so drunk before.

"Come here, my friend." She put her hand in the garbage basket and pulled out the jewels that Tom had given her. "Take this garbage downstairs and give them back to who they belong to. Tell everybody that Daisy isn't getting married. Yell loudly, 'Daisy has changed her mind!'"

She began to cry—and she cried and cried and cried. I ran out and found her mother's helper, and we locked the door and put Daisy into a cold bath. She wouldn't put the letter down. She even took it into the bath with her, until it was just a wet ball.

But she didn't talk any more about the letter. We cleaned her, put ice on her head, and put her back into her dress. A half an hour later the jewels were around her neck and she went down to join the dinner.

The next day at four o'clock she married Tom Buchanan. Soon after that they began a trip to the South Seas for three months.

I saw them after they came back, and I had never seen a girl so happy about her husband. If he left the room for even a minute she'd ask, "Where's Tom?" and she would look nervous until he returned. She would often sit on the beach with his head on her knees. She would put her fingers over his eyes and look at him with the deepest happiness. That was in August. A week later I left Santa Barbara and Tom had a car accident. I read about it in the newspapers. There was a girl with him in the car during the accident—she was a worker at the Santa Barbara hotel. That was Tom's first secret love affair with other girls.

Eight months later Daisy had her baby, and they went to live in France for a year or two. After that they came back to live in Chicago. They spent their time with a wild group of the young and rich people, but Daisy didn't drink and never got into any trouble. Not drinking among hard-drinking people is a great advantage.

Then, six weeks ago, she heard us talking about Gatsby. She had not heard that name for many years. After you left she came into my room and asked me, "Can you describe this Gatsby?" When I described him, she looked shocked. Then she said in the strangest voice that he must be the man she used to know. Then I remembered about the man that was with her in her white car.

When Jordan finished telling me this story we left the hotel and went driving in a carriage through the park.

"It was an amazing chance that brought him so close to her," I said.

"It wasn't an amazing chance at all."

"Why not?"

"Because Gatsby bought that house so that he would be close to Daisy."

I remembered the first time that I saw Gatsby. He was staring out across the water. He must have been looking at Daisy's house. Suddenly I realized that Gatsby was a man with deep feelings and real sadness.

"Gatsby wants your help," said Jordan, "he wants you to invite Daisy to your house for tea and then let him come over."

I was surprised that he wanted so little. He had waited five years and bought a huge house near Daisy. He did all of this just so that he could just "come over" to his neighbor's house one day and see her!

"Why didn't he ask you to help? Couldn't you also arrange a meeting?"

"He wants Daisy to see his house," she said. "I think he had expected her to come to one of his parties, but she never did. So he began asking people if they knew her, and I was the first person he found."

"Do you think that Daisy wants to see Gatsby?" I asked.

"She must not know. You should just invite her to tea."

It was now dark and I put my arm around Jordan's neck and pulled her towards me. I looked into her eyes and asked if she would join me for dinner.

Suddenly I stopped thinking about Daisy and Gatsby. I put both my arms around Jordan and her little, scolding mouth smiled. I pulled her closer, this time up to my face.

(end of section)