了不起的盖茨比（结识丹科迪）

了不起的盖茨比第六章：

导读：

盖茨比最初的名字是James  Gatz，是来自北达科他州的一个贫穷家庭。他考上了大学，但不得不做一名看门人来支付学费。他觉得这份工作太丢人了，于是去了苏必利尔湖畔，靠钓鱼和打零工养活自己。

丹·科迪是个白手起家的人，他因采矿而发了大财，嗜好喝酒，醉酒时头脑就不清楚，常挥霍无度，最终被别有用心的女人盯上，凄惨死去。他和盖茨比在海上结缘。盖茨比注意到一场暴风雨即将来临，他划着船去告知科迪要防范危险。出于感激，科迪给盖茨比一份工作，盖茨比成了科迪的总助理。科迪是年轻的盖茨比的导师，在很多方面都是一个榜样，除了一个方面，那就是喝酒，盖茨比认为这是一个致命弱点，因此倾向于避免喝酒。科迪死后，留给盖茨比25000美元，但并未拿到手，被科迪情妇巧取豪夺了，不过这段和丹·科迪相处的经历让盖茨比收获了恰当的教育。

　　About this time an ambitious young reporter from New York arrived one morning at Gatsby’s door and asked him if he had anything to say.

    大概在这段时间，一天早上，一个雄心勃勃的年轻记者从纽约来到盖茨比的大门口，问他有没有什么话要说。

　　“Anything to say about what?” inquired Gatsby politely.

     "要说什么话呢？"盖茨比客气道。

　　“Why—any statement to give out.”

     "呃--发表个什么声明吧。"

    It transpired after a confused five minutes that the man had heard Gatsby’s name around his office in a connection which he either wouldn’t reveal or didn’t fully understand. This was his day off and with laudable initiative he had hurried out “to see.”

★Transpired：[trænˈspaɪəd] 公开;透露;为人所知。★Laudable：[ˈlɔːdəbl] adj.应受赞扬的;值得赞美的。

    困惑了五分钟，事情的来龙去脉才弄清楚。原来这人在他的办公室里曾经听人提到盖茨比的名字，可究竟是何事却不肯透露，或者他也没完全弄清楚。这天他休息，于是就带着值得嘉许的积极性，主动地跑出城来"看看"。

　　It was a random shot, and yet the reporter’s instinct was right. Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news. Contemporary legends such as the “underground pipe-line to Canada.” attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn’t live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore. Just why these inventions were a source of satisfaction to James Gatz of North Dakota, isn’t easy to say.

    先不过是碰碰运气，然而这位记者的直觉却是对的。数百个在他家做过客的人成为宣传他过往经历的“专家”。正是他们的大肆宣扬，盖茨比的名声在这个夏天越发声名狼藉，最后差点就要成为新闻人物了。当时诸多传说，像"通往加拿大的地下管道"之类，都和他自动挂上了钩，还有一个长期流传的谣言，说他根本不是住在一座房子里，而是住在一艘像房子的船上，并且沿着长岛海岸秘密地来回漂流。究竟为什么这些杜撰的故事会使北达科他州的詹姆斯·盖茨得到满足感，这倒难以言说了。

　　James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career—when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the TUOLOMEE, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour.

    詹姆斯·盖茨--这是他的真名，至少是他法律上的姓名。他是在十七岁时改名换姓的，也是在他一生事业开端的那个特定时刻—在他看见丹·科迪先生的游艇在苏必利尔湖①上最险恶的沙洲上抛锚时。那天下午，身穿一件破旧的绿色运动衫和一条帆布裤在沙滩上游荡的还是詹姆斯·盖茨，可后来借了一艘划艇驶向“图奥勒密号”，告诉科迪半个小时之内就会有一阵大风把他刮过来把他吹散的，就已经是杰伊·盖茨比了。

　　①苏必利尔湖（Lake Superior），美国五大湖之一。

     I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people—his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.

Shiftless：[ˈʃɪftləs] 没志气的；不思上进的；混日子的。

     我猜，就在当时他就已想好了这个名宇。他的父母是碌碌无为的庄稼人--在他的想象中，他从未真正把他们接纳为自己的父母。实际上长岛西卵的杰伊·盖茨比来自他的柏拉图式的自我构想。他是上帝之子--这个说法并无深刻意味--他必须为他的天父效命，献身于一种宏大、狂野、浮华的美。因此他虚构的恰恰是一个十七岁的少年很可能会虚构的那种杰伊·盖茨比，而他始终对这个理想形象坚信不疑。

     For over a year he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed. His brown, hardening body lived naturally through the half-fierce, half-lazy work of the bracing days. He knew women early, and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorbtion he took for granted.

Hysterical：[hɪˈsterɪkl]歇斯底里的;极其可笑的。

    一年多来，为了能有饭吃、有床睡，他一直沿着苏必利尔湖南岸奔波，捕鲑鱼、捞蛤蜊，或是做其他杂事。在那些意气风发的日子里，他干着时闲时忙的活计，身体长得黝黑而强壮，过着悠闲的生活。他很早就懂得男女之事，但因为女人过分宠爱他，他倒瞧不起她们。他瞧不起年轻的处女，因为她们太愚昧，他也瞧不起别的女人，因为她们对什么事都容易歇斯底里，而他沉浸在不顾一切的自我陶醉之中，总认为那些事都是理所当然的。

     But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

★Grotesque：[ɡrəʊˈtesk] adj.怪诞的;荒唐的。★spun ：[spʌn] (使)快速旋转;(使)急转身，猛转回头，急转弯。spin的过去分词和过去式。★Drowsiness：睡意；假寐；困倦。★Oblivious：[əˈblɪviəs] 不知道;未注意;未察觉。

★Soaked： [səʊkt] 湿透;被…浸湿的。★tangled：[ˈtæŋɡld] 缠结的;混乱的。★Fairy：[ˈfeəri] (故事中的)小仙人，仙子，小精灵。

    不过他的内心，却一直激荡澎湃。夜晚卧床时，各种荒唐美妙的幻想徘徊于心头。一个绚烂得无法形容的宇宙浮现在他脑海里，这时小钟在洗脸架上滴答滴答地响着，月光似水，浸泡着他乱七八糟扔在地上的衣服。每夜他都给他那梦幻人生添枝加叶，直到昏沉的睡意笼罩着某个美妙之境。有一阵子这些幻梦为他的想象力提供了一个宣泄的出口：它们是令人满足的暗示，暗示着现实中的不真实，它们表明世界的磐石是牢牢地建立在仙女的翅膀上的。

　　An instinct toward his future glory had led him, some months before, to the small Lutheran college of St. Olaf in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny, to destiny itself, and despising the janitor’s work with which he was to pay his way through. Then he drifted back to Lake Superior, and he was still searching for something to do on the day that Dan Cody’s yacht dropped anchor in the shallows alongshore.

    数月之前，一种追求未来荣光的本能促使他前往明尼苏达州南部路德教的小圣奥拉夫学院。他在那里只待了两个星期，因为那里对他所奏响的命运之鼓、对命运本身漠不关心，这令他感到沮丧，另外他不屑为了赚取学费而做看门的工作。后来他四处游荡，又回到了苏必利尔湖，某一天他仍旧找活干，碰见丹·科迪的游艇在湖边的浅滩上抛锚了。

★路德教会，即路德宗的教会，或称信义宗，为新教宗派之一，源自16世纪德国神学家马丁·路德为革新天主教会发起的宗教改革运动。

★St. Olaf：圣奥拉夫学院是明尼苏达州诺思菲尔德的一所私立文科学院。这所学校是由一群挪威裔美国移民牧师和农民于1874年建立的，由牧师Bernt Julius Muus领导。学院以挪威国王和守护神圣奥拉夫二世的名字命名，隶属于美国福音派路德教会。

     Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny at Little Girls Point.

★Transaction：[trænˈzækʃn] (一笔)交易，业务，买卖。★Savory：[ˈseɪvəri] 令人愉快的;体面的;名声好的;好吃的。★Ramification：[ˌræmɪfɪˈkeɪʃn] （众多复杂而又难以预料的）结果，后果。★Hospitable：[hɒˈspɪtəbl] 适宜的；（环境）舒适的。

     科迪当时五十岁，他的发迹故事从一八七五年开始，是内华达州的银矿区、育空地区和每一次淘金热的产物。他做蒙大拿州铜矿生意，发了好几百万的财，结果虽然身体仍然健壮，脑子却是糊涂。无数女人对这个缺陷有所觉察，于是苦苦钻营如何让他净身出户。那个名叫艾拉·凯耶的女记者就像曼特农夫人一样利用他这个软肋，怂恿他乘上游艇出了海，她所耍的那些阴谋诡计是一九○二年耸人听闻的新闻界人尽皆知的。他沿着十分宜人的海岸漂泊了五年之久，后来在小姑娘湾，成为詹姆斯·盖茨命运的改变者。

★内华达州，简称内州，美国西部的一个州，以发达的赌博业著称。

★育空地区（Yukon），加拿大西部地区，19世纪末叶发现新金矿。

★曼特农夫人（Madame de Maintenon），（1635年11月27日至1719年4月15日），最初被称为 Madame Scarron ，是一位秘密嫁给路易十四国王的法国贵族。虽然她从未被认为是法国女王，但她是国王最亲密的顾问之一，也是皇家儿童家庭教师。

★小姑娘湾，位于加拿大安大略省。

   To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamour in the world. I suppose he smiled at Cody—he had probably discovered that people liked him when he smiled. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions (one of them elicited the brand new name) and found that he was quick and extravagantly ambitious. A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers, and a yachting cap. And when the TUOLOMEE left for the West Indies and the Barbary Coast Gatsby left too.

★At any rate：无论如何;不管怎样。

★西印度群岛是北美洲的一个次区域，被北大西洋和加勒比海包围。把这些岛群冠以“西印度”名称，实际上是来自哥伦布的错误观念。他误认为该岛是东方印度附近的岛屿，并且把这里的居民称做印第安人。后因该群岛位于西半球，故称西印度群岛，沿用至今。

★巴巴利海岸，北非中部及西部沿海地区。

    年轻的盖茨，倚着船桨，抬头望着四处有栏杆的甲板，在他眼中，那只船代表了世界上所有的美和魅力。我猜想他对科迪笑了一笑--他可能发现了，人们都喜欢看他的笑容。不管怎样，科迪问了他几个问题（其中一个就引出了那个崭新的名字），发觉他既机智又有抱负。几天之后他把他带到杜鲁斯，替他买了一件蓝色海员服、六条白帆布裤子和一顶游艇帽。等到“图奥勒密号”启程前往西印度群岛和巴巴利海岸②时，盖茨比也一同走了。

★杜鲁斯（Duluth），苏必利尔湖上的一个港口。　　★巴巴里海岸（Barbary Coast），埃及以西的北非伊斯兰教地区。

    He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about, and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby. The arrangement lasted five years, during which the boat went three times around the Continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died.

★steward ：[ˈstjuːəd] (轮船、飞机或火车上的)乘务员。★Contingencies：[kənˈtɪndʒənsiz] 可能发生的事;偶发(或不测、意外)事件。★Reposing：[rɪˈpəʊzɪŋ] 位于;被搁置在;躺;休息。

    他以一种不太明确的私人雇员身份在科迪手下工作—轮流兼任乘务员、大副、船长、秘书，甚至还当过监守，因为丹·科迪清醒的时候知道自己醉酒是什么什么德行，尽干些挥金如土的蠢事，因此他越来越信赖盖茨比，以防止这样的状况。这种安排持续了五年，在这期间那艘船环绕大陆三次。这种生活本来可以永远持续下去，谁料想一天晚上，艾拉·凯耶在波士顿上了船，一周后丹·科迪就凄凉地去世了。

    I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon. It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone.

★Florid：[ˈflɒrɪd] 红润的;过分装饰的。★Brothel：[ˈbrɒθl] 妓院。★Debauchee：纵欲者;浪荡子;放荡者。

    我记得丹·科迪那张挂在盖茨比卧室里的相片，一个头发花白、服饰花哨的老头子，表情冷酷又空洞--在美国的一个历史时期当中，就是这些浪荡的拓荒者把边疆妓院酒馆的粗野荒蛮带回到了东海岸。盖茨比酒喝得极少，这得间接地归功于科迪。尽管有时在欢快的派对上女人会把香摈揉进他的头发，他本人始终保持不碰酒的习惯。

    And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him, but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye. He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man.

★Intact：完好无损;完整。★Singularly：非常;特别;异常地。★Appropriate：合适的;恰当的。

    他也正是从科边那里继承了钱-——一笔二万五千美元的遗赠。他并没拿到钱。他从来就没搞明白那套用来对付他的法律手段，而那留下的几百万美元，一分不少地进了艾拉·凯耶的口袋。他所得到的，就是特别恰当的教育；杰伊·盖茨比的模糊轮廓已经逐渐丰满成一个有血有肉的人了。

    He told me all this very much later, but I’ve put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren’t even faintly true. Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.

★Explode：[ɪkˈspləʊd] 爆炸;爆破;爆裂;勃然(大怒)。★Halt: [hɔːlt] 停止;阻止;暂停。

    他许久才告诉我这一切的，但我在这里写了下来，为的是驳斥早先那些关于他身世的荒唐谣言，那些全是没影的事。另外，他是在一个十分混乱的时刻告诉我的，当时关于他的一切说法，我已经到了半信半疑的地步。所以我现在利用这个短暂的停顿，趁盖茨比喘口气的机会，来澄清这些误解。