《了不起的盖茨比·Chapter IX》第20节
There was nothing I could say, except the one unutterable fact that it wasn’t true. “And if you think I didn’t have my share of suffering—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard, I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful—” I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made … I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery store to buy a pearl necklace—or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons—rid of my provincial squeamishness forever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gatsby’s house was still empty when I left—the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine. One of the taxi drivers in the village never took a fare past the entrance gate without stopping for a minute and pointing inside; perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. I didn’t want to hear it and I avoided him when I got off the train.
注释摘要
十月末的第五大道上，尼克与汤姆·布坎南狭路相逢。汤姆走在前面，依旧是那副警觉而好斗的模样，手微微远离身体，仿佛时刻要把挡路的人推开。两人停下后，尼克拒绝了与他握手，直截了当地说：“你知道我怎么看你。”但真正将这一段推向深处的是汤姆随后的自我辩护。他承认了，在那个出事的下午，是他向威尔逊指明了那辆黄色汽车的主人。他理直气壮地说，那个疯子手里一直攥着枪，如果他…