《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IX》第1节
After two years I remember the rest of that 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 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.
注释摘要
读完盖茨比的结局，尼克在两年后回望那混乱的日子，字面上讲的是这样一回事：盖茨比死后，他的宅子不再有派对，取而代之的是警察、摄影师和记者没完没了地进出，像一场漫长的操练。大门口拉了绳索、站着警察挡开好奇的人，但小男孩们很快发现能穿过尼克的院子溜进来，总是有一群张着嘴围在泳池边。那个下午，有个人——也许是个侦探——弯腰对着威尔逊的尸体，用了“疯子”这个词，他那…