《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IV》第18节
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the kerb, 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. “Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.” 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 to 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. 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 rumours were circulating about her—how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say goodbye 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, shortsighted young men in town, who couldn’t get into the army at all.
注释摘要
这一小段是乔丹·贝克的回忆，发生在路易斯维尔，时间是一九一七年十月。我们一定要分清两个层面的叙述声音：外层是尼克在转述乔丹当天下午在广场酒店茶园讲的话，里层是乔丹本人的口吻与视角。乔丹说她那天上午走过黛西·费伊家门口，看见黛西那辆白色小跑车停在路边，车里坐着她和一个乔丹从没见过的中尉。他们全神贯注于彼此，直到乔丹走到五英尺内，黛西才看到她。黛西叫住她，问是…