One October day in nineteen-seventeen——
一九一七年十月里有一天--
(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)
(那天下午乔丹·贝克说，当时她挺直地坐在广场饭店茶室里一张挺直的椅子上。）
—I was walking along from one place to another, half on the sidewalks and half on the lawns. I was happier on the lawns because I had on shoes from England with rubber nobs on the soles that bit into the soft ground. I had on a new plaid skirt also that blew a little in the wind, and whenever this happened the red, white, and blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said TUT-TUT-TUT-TUT, in a disapproving way.
——我正在从一个地方向另一个地方走去，一半走在人行道上，一半走在草坪上。我更喜欢走草坪，因为我穿了一双英国鞋，鞋底有会在软绵绵的地面留下印痕的橡皮疙瘩。我还穿了一条新的能随风微微扬起的方格呢裙子，每当裙子随风扬起来，所有人家门前的红、白、蓝三色旗就都挺得笔直，并且发出"啧--啧--啧--啧"的声音，好像很不以为然似的。
The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house. She was just eighteen, two years older than me, and by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville. She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night. “Anyways, for an hour!”
几面最大的旗子和几片最人的草坪都是属于黛西·费伊家的。她刚刚十八岁，比我大两岁，是路易斯维尔所有小姐中最出风头的一个。她穿的是白衣服，开的是一辆白色小跑车，她家电话一天到晚响个不停，泰勒营那些兴奋的青年军官一个个都要求那天晚上独占她的全部时间。"至少，给一个钟头吧！"
roadster n. 单排座敞篷轿车
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away.
那天早上我从她家门口对面路过时，她的白色跑车停在路边，她跟一位我以前从未见过的中尉同坐在车上。他们俩彼此全神贯注，一直到我走到五步之内她才看见我。
If you are engrossed in something, it holds your attention completely.
“Hello, Jordan,” she called unexpectedly. “Please come here.”
"哈罗，乔丹，"她出其不意地喊道，"请你过来。"
I was flattered that she wanted to speak to me, because of all the older girls I admired her most. She asked me if I was going to the Red Cross and make bandages. I was. Well, then, would I tell them that she couldn’t come that day? The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since. His name was Jay Gatsby, and I didn’t lay eyes on him again for over four years—even after I’d met him on Long Island I didn’t realize it was the same man.
她要跟我说话，我觉得很光彩，因为在所有年纪比我大的女孩当中，我最崇拜的就是她。她问我是否到红十字会去做绷带。我说是的。那么，可否请我告诉他们说这天她不能来了？黛西说话的时候，那位军官盯住她看，每一个姑娘都巴望人家有时会用这种神态来看自己。因为我觉得那非常浪漫，所以我后来一直记得这个情节。他的名字叫杰伊·盖茨比，从那以后一隔四年多，我一直没再见过他--就连我在长岛遇到他以后，我也不知道原来就是同一个人。
That was nineteen-seventeen. By the next year I had a few beaux myself, and I began to play in tournaments, so I didn’t see Daisy very often. She went with a slightly older crowd—when she went with anyone at all. Wild rumors were circulating about her—how her mother had found her packing her bag one winter night to go to New York and say good-by to a soldier who was going overseas. She was effectually prevented, but she wasn’t on speaking terms with her family for several weeks. After that she didn’t play around with the soldiers any more, but only with a few flat-footed, short-sighted young men in town, who couldn’t get into the army at all.
那是一九一七年。到了第二年，我自己也有了几个男朋友，同时我开始参加比赛，因此我就不常见到黛西。她来往的是一帮比我年纪稍大一点的朋友--如果她还跟任何人来往的话。关于她的荒唐谣言到处传播--说什么有一个冬天夜晚她母亲发现她在收抬行装，准备到纽约去跟一个正要到海外去的军人告别。家里人有效地阻止了她，可是事后她有好几个星期不跟家里人讲话。从那以后她就不再跟军人一起玩了，只跟城里几个根本不能参军的平脚近视的青年人来往。
beau [bəʊ] n. beaux 或 beaus 纨绔子弟; 情郎
By the next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever. She had a debut after the Armistice, and in February she was presumably engaged to a man from New Orleans. In June she married Tom Buchanan of Chicago, with more pomp and circumstance than Louisville ever knew before. He came down with a hundred people in four private cars, and hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel, and the day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
等到第二年秋天，她又活跃起来，和以前一样活跃。停战以后她参加了一次初进社交界的舞会，据说二月里她跟新奥尔良市来的一个人订了婚。六月里她就跟芝加哥的汤姆·布坎农结了婚，婚礼之隆重豪华是路易斯维尔前所未闻的。他和一百位客人乘了四节包车一同南来，在莫尔巴赫饭店租了整个一层楼，在婚礼的前一天他送了她一串估计值三十五万美元的珍珠。
gay [ɡeɪ] adj. 愉快的,快乐的; 鲜明的,鲜艳的,令人愉快的; 放荡的,淫荡的; 同性恋的
debut [ˈdeɪbjuː] n. 初次登台,初次露面
presumably [prɪˈzjuːməbəlɪ]adv.推测起来,大概
New Orleans 新纽奥尔良(美国路易西安那州 (Louisiana) 东南部,密西西比 (Mississippi) 河畔的一港市)
pomp [pɔmp] n.(典礼等的)盛况,大场面; 不必要的炫耀,浮华,虚饰
I was bridesmaid. I came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress—and as drunk as a monkey. she had a bottle of Sauterne in one hand and a letter in the other.
我是伴娘之一。在举行婚礼前夕送别新娘的宴会之前半个小时，我走进她的屋子，发现她躺在床上，穿着绣花的衣裳，像那个六月的夜晚一样地美，像猴子一样喝得烂醉。她一手拿着一瓶白葡萄酒，一手捏着一封信。
sauterne [souˋtə:n] 舒泰恩酒(法国产的一种甘甜的佐餐用白葡萄酒)
“‘Gratulate me,” she muttered. “Never had a drink before, but oh how I do enjoy it.”
"恭……喜我，"她含混不清地咕哝着说，"从来没喝过酒，啊，今天喝得可真痛快。"
“What’s the matter, Daisy?”
"怎么回事，黛西？"
I was scared, I can tell you; I’d never seen a girl like that before.
我吓坏了。真的，我从来没见过一个女孩子醉成这副模样。
“Here, dearest’.” She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. “Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’.”
"喏，心肝宝贝。"她在拿到床上的字纸篓里乱摸了一会，掏出了那串珍珠，"把这个拿下楼去，是谁的东西就还给谁。告诉大家，黛西改变主意了。就说'黛西改变主意了！'"
She began to cry—she cried and cried. I rushed out and found her mother’s maid, and we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow.
她哭了起来--她哭了又哭。我跑出去，找到她母亲的贴身女佣人，然后我们锁上了门，让她洗个冷水澡。她死死捏住那封信不放。她把信带到澡盆里去，捏成湿淋淋的一团，直到她看见它碎得像雪花一样，才让我拿过去放在肥皂碟里。
But she didn’t say another word. We gave her spirits of ammonia and put ice on her forehead and hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over. Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.
可是她一句话也没有再说。我们让她问阿摩尼亚精，把冰放在她脑门上，然后又替她把衣裳穿好。半小时后我们走出房间，那串珍珠套在她脖子上，这场风波就过去了。第二天下午五点钟，她没事儿似的跟汤姆·布坎农结了婚，然后动身到南太平洋去做三个月的旅行。
ammonia [əˈməʊnɪə] n. 氨
I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back, and I thought I’d never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she’d look around uneasily, and say: “Where’s Tom gone?” and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door. She used to sit on the sand with his head in her lap by the hour, rubbing her fingers over his eyes and looking at him with unfathomable delight. It was touching to see them together—it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night, and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers, too, because her arm was broken—she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa BarbaraHotel.
他们回来以后，我在圣巴巴拉见到了他们，我觉得我从来没见过一个女孩那么迷恋丈夫的。如果他离开屋子一会儿工夫，她就会惴惴不安地四下张望，嘴里说："汤姆上哪儿去啦？"同时脸上显出一副神情恍惚的样子，直到她看见他从门口走进来。她往往坐在沙滩上，一坐个把钟头，让他把头搁在她膝盖上，一面用手指轻轻按摩他的眼睛，一而无限欣喜地看着他。看着他们俩在一起那种情景真使你感动--使你人迷，使你莞尔而笑。那是八月里的事。我离开圣巴巴拉一个星期以后，汤姆一天夜晚在凡图拉公路上与一辆货车相撞，把他车上的前轮撞掉了一只。跟他同车的姑娘也上了报，因为她的胳膊撞断了--她是圣巴巴拉饭店里的一个收拾房间的女佣人。
Santa Barbara 圣巴巴拉: 加利福尼亚的海滨旅游胜地
unfathomable [ʌnˈfæðəməb(ə)l] adj. 深奥的
The next April Daisy had her little girl, and they went to France for a year. I saw them one spring in Cannes, and later in Deauville, and then they came back to Chicago to settle down. Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all—and yet there’s something in that voice of hers. . . .
第二年四月黛西生了她那个小女儿，随后他们到法国去待了一年。有一个春天我在戛纳见到他们，后来又在多维尔见过，再后来他们就回芝加哥定居了。黛西在芝加哥很出风头，这是你知道的。他们和一帮花天酒地的人来往，个个都是又年轻又有钱又放荡的，但是她的名声却始终清清白白。也许因为她不喝酒的缘故。在爱喝酒的人中间而自己不喝酒，那是很占便宜的。你可以守口如瓶，而且，你可以为你自己的小动作选择时机，等到别人都喝得烂醉要么看不见要么不理会的时候再搞。也许黛西从来不爱搞什么桃色事件--然而她那声音里却有点儿什么异样的地方……
hard-drinking：If you describe someone as a hard-drinking person, you mean that they frequently drink large quantities of alcohol.
amour [əˈmʊə(r)] n. 私通；私情
Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you—do you remember?—if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: “What Gatsby?” and when I described him—I was half asleep—she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn’t until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.
后来，大约六个星期以前，她多年来第一次听到了盖茨比这个名宇。就是那次我问你--你还记得吗--你认识不认识西卵的盖茨比你回家之后，她到我屋里来把我推醒，问我："哪个姓盖茨比的？"我把他形容了一番--我半睡半醒--她用最古怪的声音说那一定是她过去认识的那个人。直到那时我才把这个盖茨比跟当年坐在她白色跑车里的那个军官联系起来。
When Jordan Baker had finished telling all this we had left the Plaza for half an hour and were driving in a victoria through Central Park. The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight:
等到乔丹·贝克把上面这些都讲完，我们离开了广场饭店已经有半个钟头，两人乘着一辆敞篷马车穿过中央公园。太阳已经落在西城五十几号街那一带电影明星们居住的公寓大楼后面，这时儿童像草地上的蟋蟀一样聚在一起，他们清脆的声音在闷热的黄昏中歌唱：
“I’m the Sheik of Araby.Your love belongs to me. At night when you’re are asleep. Into your tent I’ll creep——”
我是阿拉伯的首长，
你的爱情在我心上。
今夜当你睡意正浓，
我将爬进你的帐篷--
“It was a strange coincidence,” I said.
"真是奇怪的巧合。"我说。
“But it wasn’t a coincidence at all.”
"但这根本不是什么巧合。"
“Why not?”
"为什么不是？"
“Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.”
"盖茨比买下那座房子，就是因为这样一来黛西就在海湾对面嘛。"
Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.
这么说来，六月里那个夜晚他所向往的不单单是天上的过斗了。盖茨比在我眼中有了生命，忽然之间从他那子宫般的毫无目的的豪华里分娩了出来。
“He wants to know,” continued Jordan, “if you’ll invite Daisy to your house some afternoon and then let him come over.”
"他想知道，"乔丹继续说，"你肯不肯哪一天下午请黛西到你住处来，然后让他过来坐一坐。"
The modesty of the demand shook me. He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths—so that he could “come over.” some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.
这个要求如此微不足道，真使我震惊。他居然等了五年，又买了一座大厦，在那里把星光施与来来往往的飞蛾--为的是在哪个下午他可以到一个陌生人的花园里"坐一坐"。
“Did I have to know all this before he could ask such a little thing?”
"我非得光知道这一切，然后他才能托我这点小事吗？"
“He’s afraid, he’s waited so long. He thought you might be offended. You see, he’s a regular tough underneath it all.”
"他害怕，他等得太久了。他想你也许会见怪。尽管如此，他其实是非常顽强的。"
Something worried me.
我还是放不下心。
“Why didn’t he ask you to arrange a meeting?”
"他为什么不请你安排一次见面呢？"
“He wants her to see his house,” she explained. “And your house is right next door.”
"他要让她看看他的房子，"她解释道，"你的房子又刚好在紧隔壁。"
“Oh!”
"哦！"
“I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night,” went on Jordan, “but she never did. Then he began asking people casually if they knew her, and I was the first one he found. It was that night he sent for me at his dance, and you should have heard the elaborate way he worked up to it. Of course, I immediately suggested a luncheon in New York—and I thought he’d go mad: “‘I don’t want to do anything out of the way!’ he kept saying. ‘I want to see her right next door.’
"我想他大概指望哪天晚上她会翩然而至，光临他的一次宴会，"乔丹继续说，"但是她始终没有来过、后来他就开始有意无意地问人家是否认识她，而我是他找到的第一个人。就是在舞会上他派人去请我的那一晚，可惜你没听到他是怎样煞费苦心、转弯抹角才说到了正题，我自然马上建议在纽约吃一顿午餐--不料他急得像要发疯：'我可不要做什么不对头的事情！'他一再说，'我只要在隔壁见见她。'
luncheon [ˈlʌntʃ(ə)n] n. 午餐，便餐
"When I said you were a particular friend of Tom's he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn't know very much about Tom, though he says he's read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy's name."
"后来我说你是汤姆的好朋友，他又想完全打消这个主意。他对汤姆的情况不太了解，虽然他说他有好几年天天看一份芝加哥报纸，希望碰巧可以看到黛西的名字。"
It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal scepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
这时天黑了，我们的马车走到一座小桥下面，我伸出胳臂搂住乔丹的金黄色肩膀，把她拉到我身边，请她一起吃晚饭。忽然之间，我想的已经不是黛两和盖茨比，而是这个干净、结实、智力有限的人，她对世问的切都抱怀疑态度，她怪精神地往后靠在我伸出的胳臂上。一个警句开始在我耳中令人兴奋地激动鸣响："世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌的人和疲倦的人。"
scepticismBrE =skepticism AmE /ˈskeptɪsɪzəm/ n [U] an attitude of doubting that particular claims or statements are true or that something will happen
jaunty [ˈdʒɔːntɪ] adj. 愉快的；无忧无虑的
“And Daisy ought to have something in her life,” murmured Jordan to me.
"黛西生活里也应当有点安慰。"乔丹喃喃地对我说。
“Does she want to see Gatsby?”
"她愿意见盖茨比吗？"
“She’s not to know about it. Gatsby doesn’t want her to know. You’re just supposed to invite her to tea.”
"事光是不让她知道的。盖茨比不要她知道。你只是请她来喝茶。"
We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park. Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms. Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
我们经过了一排黑黝黝的树，然后五十九号街的高楼里一片柔和的灯光照到下面公园中来。跟盖茨比和汤姆·布坎农不一样，我的眼前没有什么情人的面影沿着阴暗的檐口和耀眼的招牌缥缈浮动，于是我把身边这个女孩子拉得更近一点，同时胳臂搂得更紧。她那张苍白、轻藐的嘴嫣然一笑，于是我把她拉得更紧一点，这次一直拉到贴着我的脸。
disembodied [dɪsɪmˈbɔdɪd] adj. 无实体的；空洞的；空虚的
cornice [ˈkɔːnɪs] n. 上楣(柱), 檐口
