《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter II》第9节
I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had both disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a chapter of Simon Called Peter—either it was terrible stuff or the whisky distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me. Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names) reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door. The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste, and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud, and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.
注释摘要
尼克·卡拉威以一句近乎账本般精确的声明，框定了接下来全段文字的视觉质地：“我一生只醉过两次，第二次就是那个下午。”这是典型的菲茨杰拉德式叙述节制——用极度清晰的数字，去描绘极度模糊的经验。醉意给了尼克一个理由，让他笔下的公寓场景蒙上一层“昏暗朦胧的帷幕”，但他随即又补了一句看似矛盾的交代：直到晚上八点，公寓里都“充满了快活的阳光”。这两股力量——酒精造成的…