《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IX》第15节
I’d never seen him since then. I don’t know how he knew about the funeral, or even his name. The rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby’s grave. I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur “Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,” and then the owl-eyed man said “Amen to that,” in a brave voice. We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate. “I couldn’t get to the house,” he remarked. “Neither could anybody else.” “Go on!” He started. “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.” He took off his glasses and wiped them again, outside and in. “The poor son-of-a-bitch,” he said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty goodbye. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
注释摘要
这位猫头鹰眼镜男人是本节葬礼上唯一一个自觉来到现场的非亲属、非仆役、非公务人员。尼克只交代了极简信息：三个月前在盖茨比的藏书室里见过他，之后从未再见，不知道他名字，也不知道他如何得知葬礼消息。这段叙述本身就构成一种判断——真正到场的人，恰恰是最无关、最神秘的那个。菲茨杰拉德用尼克平淡到近乎麻木的口吻写“I don’t know how he knew … …