《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter VIII》第18节
------------------------------------------------------------------------ At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing-suit and left word with the butler that if anyone phoned word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer, and the chauffeur helped him to pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn’t to be taken out under any circumstances—and this was strange, because the front right fender needed repair. Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little, and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help, but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing trees. No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.
注释摘要
这段文字是关于等待的终极书写。盖茨比选择在下午两点穿上泳衣，这个时间点本身就带着某种终结的意味——夏天已近尾声，他从未用过那个泳池，却偏偏在这一天走向它。他吩咐管家若有电话就通报到泳池，这一细节暴露出他仍在等待黛西的来电，可紧接着他又命令那辆敞篷车绝对不能开出去，理由是右前挡泥板需要修理，但尼克立刻察觉出这理由的怪异。读者如果还记得前一晚的车祸，就会明白盖…