“I suppose Daisy'll call too.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well – goodbye.”
We shook hands. I remembered something and turned around.
“They're a rotten crowd[65],” I shouted across the lawn. “You're worth the whole damn bunch put together[66].”
George Wilson told Michaelis, “He killed her.”
“Who did?”
“I have a way of finding out. He murdered her.”
“It was an accident, George.”
Wilson shook his head.
“I know,” he said definitely, “It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn't stop.”
“I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing.'”
Michaelis went home to sleep; when he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone.
His movements – he was on foot all the time – were afterward traced[67]. The police, on the strength of what he said[68] to Michaelis, that he “had a way of finding out,” supposed that he spent that time going from garage to garage inquiring for a yellow car. By half past two he was in West Egg where he asked someone the way to Gatsby's house. So by that time he knew Gatsby's name.
At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit.
The chauffeur heard the shots. Just that time I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house. Four of us, the chauffeur, servant, gardener and I, hurried down to the pool. Gatsby was lying in the pool dead.
It was after we brought Gatsby's body toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass. The holocaust[69] was complete.
Chapter 9
Most of those reports were a nightmare – grotesque, circumstantial, eager and untrue. But all this seemed remote.
I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
“Left no address?”
“No.”
“Say when they'd be back?”
“No.”
“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?”
“I don't know. Can't say.”
I wanted to get somebody for him[70]. I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: “I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. Don't worry. Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you.”
When the phone rang that afternoon I thought this would be Daisy at last. But I heard a strange man's voice. The name was unfamiliar.
“Young Parke's in trouble,” he said rapidly. “They picked him up[71].”
“Hello!” I interrupted. “Look here – this isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire… then the connection was broken.
On the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It was Gatsby's father.
“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. 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.”
“That's true,” I said.
That was all. Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower. “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on[72].”
Nobody came to Gatsby's house, but they used to go there by the hundreds.
One afternoon late in October I saw Tom Buchanan. Suddenly he saw me and walked back holding out his hand.
“What's the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?”
“Yes. You know what I think of you.”
“You're crazy, Nick,” he said quickly. “I don't know what's the matter with you.”
“Tom,” I inquired, “what did you say to Wilson that afternoon?”
“I told him the truth,” he said. “He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadn't told him who owned the car.”
I couldn't forgive him or like him but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the future that year by year recedes before us. We try to swim against the current, taken back ceaselessly into the past.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
In 1860 it was proper to be born at home. Now, so I am told, children are usually born in fashionable hospitals. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether it played any role in the astonishing story I am about to tell we will never know.
I shall tell you what happened, and let you judge for yourself.
The Roger Buttons held a high position, both social and financial, in Baltimore. This was their first baby – Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy[73] so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, the institution to which Mr. Button himself had been once sent.
On that September morning he got up at six o'clock, dressed himself, and hurried to the hospital. When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his hands together as all doctors do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.
Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button amp; Co., Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene. “Doctor Keene!” he called.
The doctor heard him, turned around, and stood waiting, with a curious expression on his harsh, medicinal face.
“What happened?” demanded Mr. Button, as he came up in a rush. “How is she? A boy? Who is it?” Doctor Keene seemed somewhat irritated.
“Is the child born?” begged Mr. Button.
Doctor Keene frowned. “Why, yes, I suppose so… ”
“Is my wife all right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“I'll ask you to go and see for yourself!” Then he turned away muttering: “Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin me-ruin anybody.”
“What's the matter? Triplets?[74]” “No, not triplets! You can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I'm through with you! I don't want to see you or any of your relatives ever again! Goodbye!”
Without another word he climbed into his carriage and drove away.
Mr. Button stood there trembling from head to foot[75]. He had suddenly lost all desire to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen-it was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later, he forced himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.
A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her.
“Good-morning. I–I am Mr. Button.”
A look of terror spread over the girl's face.
“I want to see my child,” said Mr. Button.
The nurse gave a little scream. “Oh-of course!” she cried hysterically. “Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go up!”
She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button began to mount to the second floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who approached him. “I'm Mr. Button,” he managed to say. “I want to see my-”
“All right, Mr. Button,” she agreed in a hushed voice. “Very well! But the hospital will never have the ghost of its reputation after-”
“Hurry! I can't stand this!” “Come this way Mr. Button.”
He went after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a room. They entered. Ranged around the walls were half a dozen rolling cribs.
“Well,” gasped Mr. Button, “which is mine?”
“There!” said the nurse.
Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a white blanket, in one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years old. His sparse hair was almost white[76], and he had a long smoke-coloured beard. He looked up at Mr. Button with a question in his eyes.
“Is this a hospital joke?
“It doesn't seem like a joke to us,” replied the nurse. “And that is most certainly your child.”
Mr. Button's closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake-he was gazing at a man of seventy – a baby of seventy, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib.
The old man suddenly spoke in a cracked voice. “Are you my father?” he demanded. “Because if you are,” went on the old man, “I wish you'd get me out of this place…”