了不起的盖茨比（乔丹贝克人物分析）

    For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again.

    我有段时间没见乔丹·贝克，后来在仲夏时节我又找到了她。

    At first I was flattered to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and every one knew her name.

    起初我对陪她到各处去感到很荣幸，毕竟她是家喻户晓的高尔夫球冠军。

    Then it was something more.

    后来我对她又多了另一种感情。

    I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

    这种感情不算是爱恋，只是有种善意的好奇。

    The bored haughty_[傲慢的] face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning—and one day I found what it was.

她对外界摆出的那副厌倦高傲的面孔掩盖了点什么--大多数装模作样的言行到后来总是在隐藏某种东西，即便起初并非如此——然后有一天，我发现了那是什么。

    When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round.

    当时我们一起到沃威克去参加一个乡间别墅聚会。她把一辆借来的车子就停在雨里，连车篷都没拉上，然后还撒了个谎--我突然就记起了那天晚上我在黛西家里想不起来的那件事。在乔丹参加的第一个重要的高尔夫锦标赛上，发生了一场风波，差点闹上报纸—有人说说她在半决赛时，把自己的球从一个不利的位置点上移开了。

    The thing approached the proportions of a scandal—then died away.

    事情几乎要闹成丑闻--后来平息了下去。

    A caddy retracted his statement, and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken.

    一个球童收回了自己的爆料，剩下那个唯一的目击人也承认他可能搞错了。

    The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.

    这个事件连同乔丹的名字都印记在我的脑海里。

　　Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd_[精明的

_] men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane¹ where any divergence² from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably³ dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure_[忍受] being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness_[不情愿], I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges_{[诡计，花招]} when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent ⁴smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty⁵ body.

[1、on a plane: 比喻社交圈。

 2、divergence [daɪˈvɜːdʒəns]  ：(意见、态度等的)分歧，差异。  

 3、incurably : 无可救药的, You can use incurable to indicate that someone has a particular quality or attitude and will not change.

 4、Insolent：[ˈɪnsələnt]  粗野的;无礼的;侮慢的。

 5、Jaunty：信心十足的；精力充沛的If you describe someone or something as jaunty, you mean that they are full of confidence and energy.

——词汇释义摘自科林斯词典]

    乔丹贝克本能地回避精明敏锐的男人，而如今我才明白，这是因为她认为只有在人人都循规蹈矩的社交圈里，才有安全感。她的不诚实已是无可救药。她不能容忍自己落于下风，考虑到她这种不甘愿的程度，我想她应该从年少时就开始耍各种花招，为了对外界保持又酷又傲的笑容，同时还要满足她那藏在矫健有力、精力充沛的肉体里的需求。

　　It made no difference to me.

    这对我来说倒没什么大不了。

    Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.

    女人不诚实，向来是很难苛责的--我只是当时略感遗憾，过后就忘了。