Chapter II

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile. This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke.

But above the gray land and the spasms of cheerless dust which move endlessly over it, you notice, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. These eyes are blue and gigantic. There is no face, but, instead, the eyes look from a pair of enormous yellow glasses which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wild joker of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness³⁵, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, that became a little paler because of many paintless days under sun and rain, overhang over the solemn ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges go through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the sad scene for half an hour. It was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.

Everyone who knew him insisted upon the fact that Tom had an affair. His acquaintances were shocked by the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her – but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ash heaps he jumped to his feet and, taking me by the elbow, literally forced me from the car³⁶.

“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”

I think he’d eaten a lot for lunch, and violently wanted to take me with him. I followed him and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick. It contained three shops; one of them was for rent and another was an all night restaurant; the third was a garage – Repairs. George B. Wilson, Cars bought and sold – and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was poor and bare; the only car visible was a dust-covered Ford. The owner himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste³⁷. He was a blond, spiritless man, weak, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a shade of hope appeared in his light blue eyes.

“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him cheerfully on the shoulder. “How’s business?”

“I can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you going to sell me that car?”

“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”

“Works pretty slow, don’t he?³⁸”

“No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”

“I don’t mean that,” answered Wilson quickly. “I just meant —”

His voice faded off and Tom looked impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door³⁹. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly fat, but she carried her overweight body sensuously as some women can. Her face contained no shade of beauty, but there was an immediate vitality about her that you couldn’t miss. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him right in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

“Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity⁴⁰ – except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

“I want to see you,” said Tom imperatively. “Get on the next train.”

“All right.”

We waited for her down the road and out of sight.

“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

“Awful.”

“It does her good to get away. Wilson thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so stupid he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York. She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York⁴¹. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle⁴², and in the station drugstore some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, she let four taxicabs drive away before she chose a new one, lavender-colored, and in this we climbed into. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and tapped on the front glass.⁴³

“I want to get one of those dogs for the apartment,” she said imperatively.

We backed up to a gray old man who was selling very recent puppies of a doubtful breed.

“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly.

“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”

“I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t think you got that kind?”

The man looked doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up⁴⁴.

“That’s no police dog,” said Tom.

“No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale⁴⁵. Look at that coat. That’s a dog that’ll never catch cold, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is it?”

“That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten dollars.”

The Airedale (without any doubts, there was an Airedale among the dog’s ancestors, though its feet were surprisingly white) changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture⁴⁶.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.

“That dog? That dog’s a boy.”

“Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it,” said Tom decisively.

We drove over to Fifth Avenue.

“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”

“No, you don’t,” said Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. People who ought to know say she’s very beautiful.”

“Well, I’d like to, but —”

The cab stopped at one of apartment houses. Throwing a homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and other things she bought, and went haughtily in.

The apartment was on the top floor – a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it⁴⁷, so that to move about was to stumble continually over. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph of what seemed to be a hen, but when you saw it from a distance it transformed into a bonnet with an old lady looking from under it. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table. Mrs. Wilson was first busy with the dog. A lazy elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened was like in the mist. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some. When I came back they had disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living room. Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names) reappeared, company began to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slim, chatty girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white⁴⁸. She had plucked her eyebrows and then drew them again at a more frivolous angle but nature tried to return their previous form so her face looked indistinctly. When she moved about there was a continuous clicking thanks to pottery bracelets that jingled up and down upon her arms.

Mr. McKee was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. Later I got to know that he was a photographer and had made the photo of Mrs. Wilson’s mother – the old lady in the bonnet – which was on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now dressed in an elegant afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she walked about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also changed. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage turned into impressive arrogance. Her laughter, her gestures became more violently feigned moment by moment.

“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to take care of my feet, and when she gave me the bill I was shocked.”

“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in contempt.

“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just put it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”

“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” continued Mrs. McKee. “If Chester could make a photo of you in that pose I think the result would be something special.”

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson, who moved a strand of hair away from her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee viewed her intently with his head on one side, and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

“I should change the light,” he said after a moment. We all looked at the subject again, after that Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

“You McKees have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep.”

“I told that boy about the ice.” Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair. “These people! You have to keep after them all the time.” She looked at me and laughed pointlessly.

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

“Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she asked. “I live at West Egg.”

“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby’s. Do you know him?”

“I live next door to him.”

“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s⁴⁹. That’s where all his money comes from.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

Mrs. McKee pointed suddenly at Catherine:

“Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she said, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Tom.

“I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.⁵⁰”

“Myrtle, you’ll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him.” Tom’s lips moved silently for a moment as he invented “George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump, or something like that.”

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear:

“Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to⁵¹.”

“Can’t they?”

“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. “What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”

“Doesn’t she like Wilson either?”

The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Myrtle, who had overheard the question, and it was violent and rude.

“You see,” cried Catherine triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It’s really his wife who is in their way. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.”

Daisy was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

“When they do get married,” continued Catherine, “they’re going West to live for a while until it blows over.”

“It would be more sensible to go to Europe.”

“Oh, do you like Europe?” she asked surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo. I went over there with another girl. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we lost all money in two days in the private game rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you.”

The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean⁵²