CHAPTER TEN

The Great Gatsby

For the next two days a crowd of policemen, journalists and photographers filled Gatsby's house. They asked me many questions, but I said as little as possible. One policeman called Wilson "a crazy man" as he stared at his body that afternoon. The newspaper wrote these same words the next day.

Michaelis later told the police his story and they learned that Wilson had believed his wife was secretly sleeping with another man. I thought then that the police would learn about Tom's relationship with Mrs Wilson, but her sister, Catherine, who could have told the police about Tom, didn't say a word. She told the police that her sister was very happy with her husband and had never seen Gatsby or anybody else. So, the police decided that Mrs Wilson had been accidentally killed by a stranger; and that George Wilson, crazy with sadness, had found the owner of the car, shot him and then shot himself. The police were happy with this story and they left.

This business with the police wasn't important to me. What was important was that I realized that I was responsible for Gatsby, because no one else cared about him. I realized that I was on Gatsby's side, and that we were all alone.

From the moment I telephoned the news of the murder, journalist, policemen and neighbors asked me hundreds of questions about him. Nobody except me could answer these questions, because nobody else knew him.

A half an hour after we found Gatsby's body I called Daisy on the telephone. The servant told me that she and Tom had left early that afternoon and would not come back for many weeks.

"Where did they go?" I asked.

"I don't know. I can't say."

"Is there a way to call them?"

"No."

I wanted to find someone who loved Gatsby, so that he would not be as alone in death as he was in life. I called Meyer Wolfshiem on the telephone, but he wasn't in. Then I went into Gatsby's office and looked in his desk for the phone numbers of his parents or any other relatives, but I couldn't find any. The only thing I found in the desk was a picture of Dan Cody on his boat.

The next day I sent one of Gatsby's servants to New York with a letter to Meyer Wolfshiem, asking him to come out on the next train. I thought that he would definitely come anyway, when he saw the news in the morning newspaper; I was also sure that Daisy would soon call or write a letter. But Mr Wolfshiem didn't come; instead he wrote a letter that said only, "Gatsby's death is a terrible shock to me, but I am busy with some business and do not want to be seen near Gatsby's body."

Later in the afternoon the phone rang, I thought that it would be Daisy, but I heard a man's voice on the phone.

"This is Slagle speaking ... " the voice said.

"Yes?" I didn't know the name.

"Mr Young is in trouble. The police caught him when he tried to sell those stolen bank bonds."

"Listen!" I interrupted. "I'm not Mr Gatsby. Mr Gatsby is dead."

The voice was silent for a long time and then it cried in fear and hung up suddenly.

On the third day after Gatsby's death, a letter arrived from Henry C. Gatz, Gatsby's father. It said that Mr Gatz was coming immediately.

He came. He was a serious old man; he looked very tired and very sad.

"I read about it in the newspaper," he said. "The whole story was in the newspaper. So I came here at once."

"I wanted to find you, but I didn't know how." I said.

"A crazy man killed him," he said. "He must have been crazy."

"Would you like some coffee?" I asked.

"I don't want anything. I only want to see my son!"

I showed him the room where Gatsby lay, and left him there.

After a while he came out of the room; his mouth was open, and tears were falling down his face. He was an old man and death was no longer a terrible surprise to him. He began to look around the room and when he saw the fancy house and all the expensive things in the hall and huge rooms, his sadness began to be mixed with pride. I showed him a bedroom where he could rest, and told him that the arrangements for the funeral had been stopped until he arrived.

"I thought you might want to take his body back to the West, Mr Gatsby—"

"My name is Gatz," he said sadly. He then shook his head. "My son liked the East better than the West. This is where he became rich and famous. Were you a good friend of his?"

"Yes, we were close friends."

"My son had a great future in front of him, you know. He would have been a great man if he had lived. He would have helped develop this country."

"That's true," I said, but I knew it wasn't true.

Mr Gatz lay down, and immediately fell asleep.

Mr Klipspringer, the young man who had been Gatsby's houseguest for so long, called on the phone. I was glad because I thought he would also come to the funeral. Then Gatsby would have another friend at his grave.

"The funeral is tomorrow," I told him. "At the house at two o'clock, please tell anybody who'd be interested. I would call people, but I don't know who his friends were. Of course, you'll be there."

"Well, actually, I don't think I can come. I, ah, just called because I left a pair of shoes there. Could you ask one of the servants to send them to me? My address is—"

I was so angry that I hung up the phone before he could say his address.

The morning before the funeral I went to see Meyer Wolfshiem. He brought me into his office and gave me a cigar. He told me that he felt very sad about Gatsby's death.

"I can still remember when I first met him," he said. "He was young and had just come back from the war. He was looking for work. I remember that he was so poor that he was still wearing his army uniform because he couldn't afford to buy some common clothes. He hadn't eaten for two days when I saw him. I took him to lunch and he ate more than four dollars' of food in half an hour."

"Did you give him a job?" I asked.

"Give him a job! I made him rich! He had nothing and I gave him everything. He looked like a gentleman, and when he told me he went to Oxford I knew I could use him. He first worked for a friend of mine and we quickly became very close friends, "Wolfshiem held up two of his fat fingers—"we were always together."

"He's dead now," I said after a moment. "You were his best friend, so you should come to his funeral today."

"Sorry, I can't. I can't be seen near him," he said. "In my business it is best to stay away from a man who's been killed."

I went back to West Egg, changed into my best clothes and went to the funeral. It was raining and dark. Mr Gatz was walking around the house excitedly. His pride in his son's wealth was increasing.

"When did you last see your son?" I asked.

"He came to see me two years ago, and he bought me the house where I live now. He was always very kind to me."

Before the man from the church arrived, I began to look outside for any cars. The servants all came and Mr Gatz and I, and we all waited in the hall. I asked the man from the church to wait for an hour for the other guests. But there was no reason, nobody else came.

After the funeral we drove out to the graveyard. As we carried Gatsby's body towards the grave I heard a car stop. I turned around and saw the man with the round glasses whom I had met in Gatsby's library during the first party I went to.

I'd never seen that man since then and I don't know how he learned about the funeral.

"Sorry, I couldn't get to the house," he said.

"Nobody else could either." I said with my head down.

"Really! They used to go to his house by the hundreds!" The rain fell down his face and round glasses. He took his glasses off and we watch Gatsby being put into the earth.

I tried to remember Gatsby for a moment, but he already felt very far away. The only thing I could think about was that Daisy hadn't even sent a letter or flowers.

I understand now that my story of the East has really been about the West. Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all born in the West. Perhaps we all had the same deep problem inside which made us unable to live in the East.

After Gatsby died I stopped liking the East. In October I left New York and came back home.

There was only one thing I still had to do before I left for the West. I went and saw Jordan Baker, and I talked about our relationship, and about how I had changed in the end. She sat in a big chair and was silent. When I finished speaking she told me that she was about to marry another man. I did not believe her, I thought that she was only saying it to make me angry, but I pretended to be surprised.

"But you were the one who left me," said Jordan. "You hung up on me on the telephone before. I don't care about you anymore, but it was a new experience for me, no man has ever left me before. For a while it made me feel a little strange."

I stood up and said goodbye and we shook hands.

"Do you remember," she said, "a conversation we had once about driving a car? You said that a careless driver was only safe until she met another careless driver. Well, I met one, didn't I? I was wrong about you. I thought you were an honest person, but you are as careless as I am."

What she said made me feel angry and half in love with her, and very sorry that we had ended this way; I walked away.

Just before I left I saw Tom Buchanan in the city. He was walking in the city and when he saw me he walked over to me holding out his hand, but I did not move.

"What's the problem, Nick? Do you refuse to shake hands with me?"

"Yes. You know what I think about you, Tom." Then I asked him, "What did you say to Wilson that afternoon before he killed Gatsby?"

He stared at me and didn't speak, and I knew that I had guessed the truth. Tom had told Wilson that Gatsby had killed his wife. I started to turn away from Tom, but he grasped my arm and stopped me.

"I told Wilson the truth," he said. "He came to my door while we were preparing to leave. I told the servant to say we were away, but he forced his way inside. He was acting crazy and he had a gun. He might have killed me if I hadn't told him who owned the car." Tom then paused for a moment. "Gatsby should have died anyway. He drove over my girlfriend like you'd drive over a dog. He never even stopped his car."

There was nothing I could say to him. I couldn't tell him that it was really Daisy who killed Mrs Wilson.

I couldn't forgive Tom or like him, but I understood that he believed that he had done the right thing. He was careless and stupid. Tom and Daisy were careless people, they destroyed things and hurt people, and then made other people fix the damage that they caused. In the end they could always hide in their money, or their carelessness, or whatever power it was that kept them together.

I shook his hand; it felt silly not to, for I suddenly realized that I was talking to a child in an adult body.

When I finally left West Egg Gatsby's huge house was still empty—the grass on his yard was as long as my grass.

On my last night in West Egg, I went over and looked once last time at Gatsby's huge house. Then I walked down on to Gatsby's piece of beach and sat on the sand. As I sat there thinking, I thought of the wonder in Gatsby's heart when he first saw the green light on Daisy's wall. He had traveled a long way to this place, and Daisy seemed so close to him that he was sure he would have her again. He did not understand that Daisy was already in his past; their time together was still somewhere far outside of the city, somewhere in the Midwest where a young Daisy and a young Jay Gatsby were still in love.

Gatsby believed in his dream of a future with Daisy. He didn't realize that when we move towards our dreams, they move farther and farther away from us. We move forward, like boats sailing against the wind and the waves, but all the time we are carried back into our past.

(end of section)