了不起的盖茨比（黛西选择和汤姆结婚）

     I insisted on paying the check. As the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan across the crowded room.

我坚持付账。服务员把找的零钱送来时，我瞥见汤姆·布坎南在拥挤的餐厅的那一边。

　　“Come along with me for a minute,” I said; “I’ve got to say hello to some one.”

    "跟我来一下，"我说，"我得跟一个人打个招呼。" 

　　 When he saw us Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.

     汤姆一看见我们就跳了起来，迎着我们迈了五六步。

　　“Where’ve you been?” he demamded eagerly. “Daisy’s furious because you haven’t called up.”

     "你这段时间去哪儿了？"他急切地问道，"黛西气死了，因为你一直不打电话来。"

　　“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”

     "这位是盖茨比先生，布坎南先生。"

　　They shook hands briefly, and a strained, unfamiliar look of embarrassment came over Gatsby’s face.

    他们短促地握了握手，盖茨比脸上浮现出一种不安的、不常见的窘迫表情。

　　“How’ve you been, anyhow?” demanded Tom of me. “How’d you happen to come up this far to eat?”

     "你近来到底怎么样？"汤姆问我，"你怎么来这么远的地方吃饭？"

　　“I’ve been having lunch with Mr. Gatsby.”

     "我是和盖茨比先生一道来吃午餐的。"

　　I turned toward Mr. Gatsby, but he was no longer there.

   我转向盖茨比先生，但他已不见了踪影。 

　　One October day in nineteen-seventeen——

　　(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)

   一九一七年十月的一天——（那天下午，乔丹笔直地坐在广场饭店茶园里的直靠背椅上，说起了故事）

　　—I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT, in a disapproving way.

    --我正在从一个地方步行去另一个地方，一脚走在人行道上，一脚踩在草坪上。我更喜欢走草坪，因为我穿了一双英国鞋，鞋底有橡胶疙瘩，会在柔软的地面留下印痕。我还穿了一条能随风微微扬起的新格子短裙，此时家家户户门前的红、白、蓝三色旗就都挺得笔直，并且发出"啧--啧--啧--啧"的声音，好像很不赞同似的。

　　The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. “Anyways, for an hour!”

    最大的几面旗子和最大的几片草坪都属于黛西·费伊家。她当时十八岁，比我大两岁，是路易斯维尔所有小姐中最出风头的一个。她总是穿着白裙子，还有辆小小的白色敞篷跑车，她家电话一天到晚响个不停，泰勒营那些兴奋的青年军官一个个都要求在当晚独占她的时间。"至少，给一个钟头吧！"

 泰勒营，位于美国肯塔基州路易维尔的一个军事基地，以前美国第12任美国总统、陆军少将扎卡里·泰勒命名，曾是美国最大的军事训练营。

　　When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away.

   那天早上，我从她家对面路过时，她的白色跑车停在路边，她跟一位我以前从未见过的中尉同坐在车里。他们的注意力都放在彼此身上，我都走到离他们只有五步远了，她才看见我。

　　“Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.”

    "你好，乔丹，"她出其不意地喊道，"请过来。"

　　I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn’t come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on him again for over four years—even after I’d met him on Long Island I didn’t realize it was the same man.

    她要跟我说话，我受宠若惊，因为在所有年纪比我大的女孩当中，我最崇拜的就是她。她问我是不是要去红十字会制作绷带。我说是的。然后她问我能不能转告红十字会的人说她那天不能来了？  黛西说话的时候，那位军官盯住她看，每个年轻女孩都会在某一个时刻渴望被那样的眼神看着。因为我觉得这件事非常浪漫，就一直记到了现在。那个军官叫杰伊·盖茨比，后来的四年多，我一直没再见过他--哪怕是我在长岛遇见了他，我也不知道原来就是同一个人。

　　That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn’t see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd—when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about her—how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town, who couldn’t get into the army at all.

    那是一九一七年。到了第二年，我自己也交了几个男朋友，同时我开始参加锦标赛，因此我就不常见到黛西。她当时和一群稍微年长一些的朋友来往——如果她还会跟谁来往的话。  关于她的荒唐谣言到处传播--说什么在一个冬天的晚上，她母亲发现她在收抬行装，准备到纽约去跟一个即将去海外的军官道别。家里人死死拦住了她，但之后好几个星期，极少跟家里人讲话。从那以后她就不再跟军人一起玩了，只跟城里几个根本不能参军的平脚近视的年轻人来往。

　　By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

   等到来年秋天，她又活跃起来，和先前一样。停战以后她参加了一个舞会，正式踏入社交界，据说二月里她跟新奥尔良市来的一个人订了婚。六月里她就跟芝加哥的汤姆·布坎南结了婚，婚礼之隆重豪华是路易斯维尔前所未闻的。汤姆带了一百号人南下，足足坐了四辆私家轿车，还在希尔巴赫酒店包了一整层楼，在婚礼的前一天他送了她一串估计值三十五万美元的珍珠。

停战日， 1918年11月11日为第一次世界大战停战日，德国政府代表埃尔茨贝格尔同协约国联军总司令福煦在法国东北部贡比涅森林的雷东德车站签署停战协定，德国投降。

希尔巴赫酒店，美国肯塔基州路易维尔的一家豪华酒店，由德国移民希尔巴赫兄弟所创建，1905年开业。装潢走法式文艺复兴的风格，展现了欧洲旧世界的华丽贵气。菲茨杰拉德曾入住此处，并获得灵感，就将此酒店写进了本书。

　　I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress—and as drunk as a monkey. she had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.

    我是伴娘。婚礼彩排晚宴开始之前的半个小时，我走进她的屋子，看见她躺在床上，穿着绣花的衣裳，像那个六月的夜晚一样地美，像猴子一样喝得烂醉。她一手拿着一瓶白葡萄酒，一手捏着一封信。

　　“‘Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.”

     "恭喜我，"她喃喃道，"我以前从来没喝过酒，不过，哦……这酒喝起来真痛快。"

　　“What’s the matter, Daisy?”

     "怎么了，黛西？"

　　I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before.

    我吓坏了。真的，我从来没见过哪个女孩这个样子。

　　“Here, deares’.” She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’.”

     "给你，亲爱的。"她之前把一个废纸篓拿到床上去了，此时乱找了一会，掏出了那串珍珠，"把这个拿下楼去，是谁的东西就还给谁。告诉大家，黛西改变主意了，就说'黛西改变主意了！'" 

　　She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother’s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.

    她哭了起来--不停地哭。我跑出去，找到她母亲的贴身女佣人，然后我们锁上了门，让她洗个冷水澡。她死死捏住那封信不放。带着它进了浴缸，攒成了湿淋淋的一团，直到她眼看着那信像雪花一样碎成了片，才让我把它放进肥皂盒里。

　　But she didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.

    可是她一句话也没有再说。我们给她闻了芳香氨精，在她额头上敷了冰，然后又替她把裙子穿好。半小时后我们走出房间，那串珍珠也已套在她脖子上，这场风波就过去了。第二天下午五点，她平静地嫁给了汤姆·布坎南，然后便启程去了南太平洋，开始了三个月的旅行。

　　I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily, and say: “Where’s Tom gone?” and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together—it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel.

    他们回来之后，我在圣巴巴拉①见到了他们，我觉得我从来没见过哪个女孩这么迷恋自己的丈夫。但凡汤姆离开房间一会儿，她就会心神不宁地四下张望，嘴里还念叨："汤姆上哪儿去啦？"同时脸上显出一副恍惚的表情，直到看见汤姆进门为止。她经常坐在沙滩上，一坐就是个把钟头，让汤姆枕着她的大腿，一面用手指轻轻按摩他的眼睛，一边望着他，欣喜非常。他们俩在一起的那种情景真使你感动--看着看着，不自觉地使你入迷和莞尔一笑。那是八月里的事。我离开圣巴巴拉一周之后的一天晚上，汤姆在文图拉公路上与一辆货车相撞，把他车上的前轮撞掉了一只。跟他在一起的姑娘也上了报纸，因为她的胳膊撞折了——她是圣巴巴拉酒店打扫房间的一个女服务员。

　　①加利福尼亚的海滨旅游胜地。

　　The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all—and yet there’s something in that voice of hers. . . .

    第二年四月黛西生了她那个小女儿，随后他们到法国去住了一年。有一个春天我在戛纳①见到他们，后来又在多维尔②见过，再后来他们就回芝加哥定居了。黛西在芝加哥很受欢迎，这你也知道。他们和一帮花天酒地的人一起搬回来的，那些人全都很年轻，很有钱，也很放荡，但是她的名声却始终清清白白。也许因为她不喝酒的缘故。跟一群酒鬼混在一起却不喝酒，那是很占便宜的。你可以守口如瓶，而且，你要是想小小出格一次也能自己找时机，等别人都喝大了，注意不到或者无心理会的时候就行。也许黛西根本没出过轨吧——不过她说起话来，感觉总有点不对劲……　　

①法国南部海港，旅游疗养胜地。

②法国西北部旅游胜地。

　　Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you—do you remember?—if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: “What Gatsby?” and when I described him—I was half asleep—she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn’t until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.

    后来，大概六个星期前，她多年来第一次听到了盖茨比这个名宇。就是那次我问你--你还记得吗--你认识不认识西卵的盖茨比。你回家之后，她就来我房间把我叫醒了，问我“什么盖茨比？”我把他形容了一番--她就用一种非常奇怪的语气说，他一定是她过去认识的那个人。直到那一刻，我才把这个盖茨比和坐在她白色跑车里的那位军官联系起来。

　　When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park. The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:

   当乔丹·贝克说完这些的时候，我们已经离开广场饭店半个小时了，正驾着一辆维多利亚马车穿过中央公园。太阳已经落在西城五十几号街那片电影明星们居住的公寓大楼后面，女孩们清脆的歌声，就如同草地上的蟋蟀齐鸣，在炎炎暮色中悠扬而起：

　“I’m the Sheik of Araby.Your love belongs to me.At night when you’re are asleep Into your tent I’ll creep——”

        我是阿拉伯的酋长，

　　　　你的心系在我身上。

　　　　今夜当你睡意正浓，

　　　　我将钻进你的帐篷—

      注：盖茨比就好比阿拉比的酋长，属于他的爱是黛西的。乔丹向他讲述了黛西和盖茨比的过去，他们是如何相遇并相爱的，直到盖茨比参战后才结束。当乔丹第一次看到盖茨比和黛西在一起时，她立刻注意到他们相爱了。他们全神贯注于对方，直到我离她五英尺远时她才看到我……因为这对我来说太浪漫了，所以我一直记得那件事。

       这首歌是对盖茨比对黛西的感情的一个过眼云烟的隐喻，以及他在戴西结婚后，多年没见她而无法让她离开。盖茨比相信黛西的爱“属于他”，她注定要和他在一起而不是和汤姆在一起。由于他已经独立发财，他相信他可以通过他的名誉和金钱让她再次爱上他；“当她睡着的时候”，他通过朋友向她示好的努力是秘密的，在黛西不知情的情况下进行的。“钻进她的帐篷里”，这种试图把自己插入她的生活中的尝试，最终被他们的各种情绪爆发和汤姆的猜疑所破坏。“酋长”盖茨比再也不能隐身了，所以他最初悄悄地讨好黛西的计划失败了。

　　“It was a strange coincidence,” I said.

     "真是奇怪的巧合。"我说。

　　“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.”

     "但这根本不是什么巧合。" 

　　“Why not?”

     "为什么不是？"

　　“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”

     "盖茨比买下那座房子，就是为了能跟黛西隔水相望啊。"

　　Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.

这么说来，六月里那个夜晚他所向往的不只是那满天的星辰。盖茨比在我眼中有了生命，他那毫无意义的华丽就如同子宫，忽然之间分娩出了真实的盖茨比。