Well, Ill certainly try. What I called up about is
Wait a minute, I interrupted. How about saying youll come?
Well, the fact is the truth of the matter is that Im staying with some people up here in Greenwich, and they rather expect me to be with them tomorrow. In fact, theres a sort of picnic or something. Of course Ill do my very best to get away.
I ejaculated an unrestrained Huh! and he must have heard me, for he went on nervously:
What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left there. I wonder if itd be too much trouble to have the butler send them on. You see, theyre tennis shoes, and Im sort of helpless without them. My address is care of B. F.
I didnt hear the rest of the name, because I hung up the receiver.
After that I felt a certain shame for Gatsby one gentleman to whom I telephoned implied that he had got what he deserved. However, that was my fault, for he was one of those who used to sneer most bitterly at Gatsby on the courage of Gatsbys liquor, and I should have known better than to call him.
The morning of the funeral I went up to New York to see Meyer Wolfshiem; I couldnt seem to reach him any other way. The door that I pushed open, on the advice of an elevator boy, was marked The Swastika Holding Company, and at first there didnt seem to be anyone inside. But when Id shouted hello several times in vain, an argument broke out behind a partition, and presently a lovely Jewess appeared at an interior door and scrutinized me with black hostile eye.
Nobodys in, she said. Mr. Wolfshiems gone to Chicago.
The first part of this was obviously untrue, for someone had begun to whistle The Rosary, tunelessly, inside.
Please say that Mr. Carraway wants to see him.
I cant get him back from Chicago, can I?
At this moment a voice, unmistakably Wolshiems called Stella! from the other side of the door.
Leave your name on the desk, she said quickly. Ill give it to him when he gets back.
But I know hes there.
She took a step toward me and began to slide her hands indignantly up and down her hips.
You young men think you can force your way in here any time, she scolded. Were getting sickantired of it. When I say hes in Chicago, hes in Chicago.
I mentioned Gatsby.
Oh-h! She looked at me over again. Will you just What was your name?
She vanished. In a moment Meyer Wolfshiem stood solemnly in the doorway, holding out both hands. He drew me into his office, remarking in a reverent voice that it was a sad time for all of us, and offered me a cigar.
My memory goes back to when first I met him, he said. A young major just out of the army and covered over with medals he got in the war. He was so hard up he had to keep on wearing his uniform because he couldnt buy some regular clothes. First time I saw him was when he come into Winebrenners poolroom at Forty-third Street and asked for a job. He hadnt eat anything for a couple of days. Come on have some lunch with me, I said. He ate more than four dollars worth of food in half an hour.
Did you start him in business? I inquired.
Start him! I made him.
Oh.
I raised him up out of nothing, right out of the gutter. I saw right away he was a fine-appearing, gentlemanly young man, and when he told me he was an Oggsford I knew I could use him good. I got him to join up in the American Legion and he used to stand high there. Right off he did some work for a client of mine up to Albany. We were so thick like that in everything he held up two bulbous fingers always together.
I wondered if this partnership had included the Worlds Series transaction in 1919.
Now hes dead, I said after a moment. You were his closest friend, so I know youll want to come to his funeral this afternoon.
Id like to come.
Well, come then.
The hair in his nostrils quivered slightly, and as he shook his head his eyes filled with tears.
I cant do it I cant get mixed up in it, he said.
Theres nothing to get mixed up in. Its all over now.
When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different if a friend of mine died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the end. You may think thats sentimental, but I mean it to the bitter end.
I saw that for some reason of his own he was determined not to come, so I stood up.
Are you a college man? he inquired suddenly.
For a moment I thought he was going to suggest a gonnegtion, but he only nodded and shook my hand.
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead, he suggested. After that my own rule is to let everything alone.
When I left his office the sky had turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle. After changing my clothes I went next door and found Mr. Gatz walking up and down excitedly in the hall. His pride in his son and in his sons possessions was continually increasing and now he had something to show me.
Jimmy sent me this picture. He took out his wallet with trembling fingers. Look there.
It was a photograph of the house, cracked in the corners and dirty with many hands. He pointed out every detail to me eagerly. Look there! and then sought admiration from my eyes. He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself.
Jimmy sent it to me. I think its a very pretty picture. It shows up well.
Very well. Had you seen him lately?
He come out to see me two years ago and bought me the house I live in now. Of course we was broke up when he run off from home, but I see now there was a reason for it. He knew he had a big future in front of him. And ever since he made a success he was very generous with me.
He seemed reluctant to put away the picture, held it for another minute, lingeringly, before my eyes. Then he returned the wallet and pulled from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy[100].
Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.
He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath:
Rise from bed 6.00 A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling 6.156.30
Study electricity, etc 7.158.15
Work 8.304.30 P.M.
Baseball and sports 4.305.00 P.M.
Practice elocution, poise and
how to attain it 5.006.00
Study needed inventions. 7.009.00
GENERAL RESOLVES
No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No more smoking or chewing.
Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
Be better to parents
I come across this book by accident, said the old man. It just shows you, dont it?
It just shows you.
Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what hes got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it.
He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use.
A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsbys father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasnt any use. Nobody came.
* * *About five oclock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and me in the limousine, and a little later four or five servants and the postman from West Egg, in Gatsbys station wagon, all wet to the skin. As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marveling over Gatsbys books in the library one night three months before.
Id never seen him since then. I dont 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 Gatsbys 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 hadnt sent a message or a flower. Dimly I heard someone murmur Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on,[101] 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 couldnt 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 oclock 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 ThisorThats 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.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.