《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IV》第23节
“He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought you might be offended. You see, he’s regular tough underneath it all.” Something worried me. “Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?” “He wants her to see his house,” she explained. “And your house is right next door.” “Oh!” “I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,” went on Jordan, “but she never did. Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a luncheon in New York—and I thought he’d go mad: “ ‘I don’t want to do anything out of the way!’ he kept saying. ‘I want to see her right next door.’ “When I said you were a particular friend of Tom’s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn’t know very much about Tom, though he says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name.” It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”
注释摘要
这段对话里藏着一个精密而脆弱的情感逻辑，乔丹正在转述盖茨比的请求，她的话一层层剥开这个人的动机：他害怕，他等了太久，他担心你尼克会生气，他表面上彬彬有礼，骨子里却是个“regular tough”——一个真正的硬汉。这里的 tough 不是粗暴，而是一种从底层挣扎出来的意志力，乔丹用这个词试图让尼克理解，盖茨比这种小心翼翼的请求不是软弱，而是某种严密自我控…