Chapter IX

After two years I remember the rest of the day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression ‘madman’ as he bent over Wilson’s body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning.

Most of those reports were a nightmare – grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade – but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too – looked at the coroner^[97] with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man ‘deranged by grief’ in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.

But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. I found myself on Gatsby’s side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then, as he lay in his house and didn’t move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested – interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.

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. 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 – ’

Meyer Wolfshiem’s name wasn’t in the phone book. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the phone.

‘Will you ring again?’

‘I’ve rung them three times.’

‘It’s very important.’

‘Sorry. I’m afraid no one’s there.’

I went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. But, though they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with shocked eyes, his protest continued in my brain:

‘Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.’

Someone started to ask me questions, but I broke away and going upstairs looked hastily through the unlocked parts of his desk – he’d never told me definitely that his parents were dead. But there was nothing – only the picture of Dan Cody, a token of forgotten violence, staring down from the wall.

Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfshiem, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon – but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfshiem arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfshiem’s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.

Dear Mr. Carraway. This has been one of the most terrible shocks of my life to me I hardly can believe it that it is true at all. Such a mad act as that man did should make us all think. I cannot come down now as I am tied up in some very important business and cannot get mixed up in this thing now. If there is anything I can do a little later let me know in a letter by Edgar. I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.

Yours truly

MEYER WOLFSHIEM

and then hasty addenda beneath:

Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all.

When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.

‘This is Slagle speaking…’

‘Yes?’ The name was unfamiliar.

‘Hell of a note, isn’t it? Get my wire?’

‘There haven’t been any wires.’

‘Young Parke’s in trouble,’ he said rapidly. ‘They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving ’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns – ’

‘Hello!’ I interrupted breathlessly. ‘Look here – this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead.’

There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation… then a quick squawk as the connection was broken.

* * *

I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.

It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster against the warm September day. His eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse grey beard that I had difficulty in getting off his coat. He was on the point of collapse, so I took him into the music room and made him sit down while I sent for something to eat. But he wouldn’t eat, and the glass of milk spilled from his trembling hand.

‘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.’

His eyes, seeing nothing, moved ceaselessly about the room.

‘It was a madman,’ he said. ‘He must have been mad.’

‘Wouldn’t you like some coffee?’ I urged him.

‘I don’t want anything. I’m all right now, Mr. —’

‘Carraway.’

‘Well, I’m all right now. Where have they got Jimmy?’

I took him into the drawing-room, where his son lay, and left him there. Some little boys had come up on the steps and were looking into the hall; when I told them who had arrived, they went reluctantly away.

After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendour of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride. I helped him to a bedroom upstairs; while he took off his coat and vest I told him that all arrangements had been deferred until he came.

‘I didn’t know what you’d want, Mr. Gatsby —’

‘Gatz is my name.’

‘ – Mr. Gatz. I thought you might want to take the body West.’

He shook his head.

‘Jimmy always liked it better down East. He rose up to his position in the East. Were you a friend of my boy’s, Mr. – ?’

‘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.’

He touched his head impressively, and I nodded.

‘If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill^[98]. He’d of helped build up the country.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, uncomfortably.

He fumbled at the embroidered coverlet, trying to take it from the bed, and lay down stiffly – was instantly asleep.

That night an obviously frightened person called up, and demanded to know who I was before he would give his name.

‘This is Mr. Carraway,’ I said.

‘Oh!’ He sounded relieved. ‘This is Klipspringer.’

I was relieved too, for that seemed to promise another friend at Gatsby’s grave. I didn’t want it to be in the papers and draw a sightseeing crowd, so I’d been calling up a few people myself. They were hard to find.

‘The funeral’s tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Three o’clock, here at the house. I wish you’d tell anybody who’d be interested.’

‘Oh, I will,’ he broke out hastily. ‘Of course I’m not likely to see anybody, but if I do.’

His tone made me suspicious.

‘Of course you’ll be there yourself.’

‘Well, I’ll certainly try. What I called up about is —’

‘Wait a minute,’ I interrupted. ‘How about saying you’ll come?’

‘Well, the fact is – the truth of the matter is that I’m staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, there’s a sort of picnic or something. Of course I’ll do my very best to get away.’

I ejaculated an unrestrained ‘Huh!’ and he must have heard me, for he went on nervously:

‘What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if it’d be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, they’re tennis shoes, and I’m sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F. —’

I didn’t hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.

After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby – one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsby’s liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.

The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldn’t seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked ‘The Swastika Holding Company’, and at first there didn’t seem to be anyone inside. But when I’d shouted ‘hello’ several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eye.

‘Nobody’s in,’ she said. ‘Mr. Wolfshiem’s gone to Chicago.’

The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle ‘The Rosary’, tunelessly, inside.

‘Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.’

‘I can’t get him back from Chicago, can I?’

At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolshiem’s called ‘Stella!’ from the other side of the door.

‘Leave your name on the desk,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll give it to him when he gets back.’

‘But I know he’s there.’

She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.

‘You young men think you can force your way in here any time,’ she scolded. ‘We’re getting sickantired of it. When I say he’s in Chicago, he’s in Chicago.’

I mentioned Gatsby.

‘Oh-h!’ She looked at me over again. ‘Will you just – What was your name?’

She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.

‘My memory goes back to when first I met him,’ he said. ‘A young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldn’t buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Winebrenner’s poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadn’t eat anything for a couple of days. “Come on have some lunch with me,” I said. He ate more than four dollars’ worth of food in half an hour.’

‘Did you start him in business?’ I inquired.

‘Start him! I made him.’

‘Oh.’

‘I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything’ – he held up two bulbous fingers – ‘always together.’

I wondered if this partnership had included the World’s Series transaction in 1919.

‘Now he’s dead,’ I said after a moment. ‘You were his closest friend, so I know you’ll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.’

‘I’d like to come.’

‘Well, come then.’

The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.

‘I can’t do it – I can’t get mixed up in it,’ he said.

‘There’s nothing to get mixed up in. It’s all over now.’

‘When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different – if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think that’s sentimental, but I mean it – to the bitter end.’

I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.

‘Are you a college man?’ he inquired suddenly.

For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a ‘gonnegtion’, but he only nodded and shook my hand.

‘Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,’ he suggested. ‘After that my own rule is to let everything alone.’

When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his son’s possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.

‘Jimmy sent me this picture.’ He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. ‘Look there.’