The Great Gatsby: Chapter Eight

In this episode of Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, Wilson, despite the best efforts of his friend Michaelis, becomes convinced that his wife Myrtle didn't die by accident, but by design. Given the only too traceable yellow car, there is really only one way that events can now play out.

Trigger warning: description of two fatalities.

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Music by William King.

Transcript

Hello there, It's Mandy here. Welcome back to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And we've reached chapter eight. But before I begin, I'd like to read you a quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald. He says, I never at any one time saw Gatsby clear myself, For he started as one man I knew and then changed into myself. The amalgam was never complete in my mind. Please go ahead and make yourself really comfortable. Settle down into your chair or your bed. Relax your hands, Drop your shoulders and just try and relax your jaw. That's great. Then I'll begin. Chapter eight. I couldn't sleep all night. A foghorn was groaning incessantly on the sound and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, Frightening dreams. Towards dawn I heard a taxi go up Gatsby's drive and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress. I felt I had something to tell him, Something to warn him about and morning would be too late. Crossing his lawn I saw that his front door was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, Heavy with dejection or sleep. Nothing happened, He said wanly. I waited and about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light. His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions and felt over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches. Once I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere and the rooms were musty as though they hadn't been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an unfamiliar table with two stale dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the drawing room we sat smoking out into the darkness. You ought to go away, I said, It's pretty certain they'll trace your car. Go away now, Old sport. Go to Atlantic City for a week or up to Montreal. He wouldn't consider it. He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn't bear to shake him free. It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody. Told it to me because Jay Gatsby had broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think he would have acknowledged anything now without reserve but he wanted to talk about Daisy. She was the first nice girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, Then alone. It amazed him. He had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there. It was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, A hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, Of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motorcars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy. It increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, Pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. But he knew that he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, He was at present a penniless young man without a past and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of his time. He took what he could get ravenously and unscrupulously. Eventually he took Daisy one still October night, Took her because he had no real right to touch her hand. He might have despised himself for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security. He let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself, That he was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact he had no such facilities. He had no comfortable family standing behind him and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world. But he didn't despise himself and it didn't turn out as he had imagined. He had intended probably to take what he could and go but now he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail. He knew that Daisy was extraordinary but he didn't realise just how extraordinary a nice girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, Into her rich full life, Leaving Gatsby nothing. He felt marriage to her, That was all. When they met again two days later it was Gatsby who was breathless, Who was somehow betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of starshine. The wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned towards him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, Of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy gleaming like silver, Safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor. I can't describe to you how surprised I was to find out that I loved her old sport. I even hoped for a while that she'd throw me over but she didn't because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot because I knew different things from her. Well there I was, Way off my ambitions, Getting deeper in love every minute and all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do? On the last afternoon before he went abroad he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had made them tranquil for a while as if to give them a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers gently as though she were asleep. He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went to the front and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine guns. After the armistice he tried frantically to get home but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now. There was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all. For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the Beale Street blues while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour there were always rims that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor. Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season. Suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now immediately and the decision must be made by some force of love, Of money, Of unquestionable practicality that was close at hand. That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford. It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, Filling the house with grey turning gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow pleasant movement in the air, Scarcely a wind, Promising a cool lovely day. I don't think she ever loved him. Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. You must remember old sport, She was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her, That made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper and the result was she hardly knew what she was saying. He sat down gloomily. Of course she might have loved him for just a minute when they were first married and loved me more even then, Do you see? Suddenly he came out with a curious remark. In any case, He said, It was just personal. What could you make of that except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn't be measured? He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses, So his idea of the city itself, Even though she was gone from it, Was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found her, That he was leaving her behind. The day coach, He was penniless now, Was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a folding chair and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, As it sank lower, Seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, The freshest and the best forever. It was nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavour in the air. The gardener, The last one of Gatsby's former servants, Came to the foot of the steps. I'm going to drain the pool today, Mr Gatsby. Leaves will start falling pretty soon and then there's always trouble with the pipes. Don't do it today, Gatsby answered. He turned to me apologetically. You know, Old sport, I've never used that pool all summer. I looked at my watch and stood up. Twelve minutes to my train. I didn't want to go to the city. I wasn't worth a decent stroke of work but it was more than that. I didn't want to leave Gatsby. I missed that train and then another before I could get myself away. I'll call you up, I said finally. Do, Old sport, I'll call you about noon. We walked slowly down the steps. I suppose Daisy will call too. He looked at me anxiously as if he hoped I'd corroborate this. I suppose so. Well, Goodbye. We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge, I remembered something and turned round. They're a rotten crowd, I shouted across the lawn. You're worth a whole darn bunch put together. I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First, He nodded politely and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of colour against the white steps and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption and he had stood on those steps concealing his incorruptible dream as he waved them goodbye. I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for that, I and the others. Goodbye, I called. I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby. Up in the city, I tried for a while to list the quotations on an interminable amount of stock. Then I fell asleep in my swivel chair. Just before noon, The phone woke me and I started up with sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker. She often called me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool, As if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window. But this morning it seemed harsh and dry. I've left Daisy's house, She said. I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon. Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, But the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid. You weren't so nice to me last night. How could it have mattered then? Silence for a moment. Then, However, I want to see you. I want to see you too. Suppose I don't go to Southampton and come into town this afternoon. No, I don't think this afternoon. It's impossible this afternoon. We talked like that for a while and then abruptly we weren't talking any longer. I don't know which of us hung up with a sharp click, But I know I didn't care. I couldn't have talked to her across the tea table that day if I never talked to her again in this world. I called Gatsby's house a few minutes later, But the line was busy. I tried four times. Finally an exasperated central told me the wire was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Taking out my timetable, I drew a small circle around the 350 train. Then I leaned back in my chair and tried to think. It was just noon. When I passed the ash heaps on the train that morning, I had crossed deliberately to the other side of the car. I suppose there'd be a curious crowd around there all day with little boys searching for dark spots in the dust and some garrulous man telling over and over what had happened until it became less and less real, Even to him, And he could tell it no longer and Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten. Now I want to go back a little and tell what happened at the garage after we left there the night before. They had difficulty in locating the sister, Catherine. She must have broken her rule against drinking that night, For when she arrived, She was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to Flushing. When they convinced her of this, She immediately fainted, As if that was the intolerable part of the affair. Someone, Kind or curious, Took her in his car and drove her in the wake of her sister's body. Until long after midnight, A changing crowd lapped up against the front of the garage while George Wilson rocked himself back and forth on the couch inside. For a while, The door of the office was open and everyone who came into the garage glanced irresistibly through it. Finally, Someone said it was a shame and closed the door. Michaelis and several other men were with him, First four or five men, Later two or three men. Still later, Michaelis had to ask the last stranger to wait there 15 minutes longer while he went back to his own place and made a pot of coffee. After that, He stayed there alone with Wilson until dawn. About three o'clock, The quality of Wilson's incoherent muttering changed. He grew quieter and began to talk about the yellow car. He announced that he had a way of finding out who that yellow car belonged to and then he blurted out that a couple of months ago his wife had come from the city with her face bruised and her nose swollen. But when he heard himself say this, He flinched and began to cry, Oh my god, Again in his groaning voice. Michaelis made a clumsy attempt to distract him. How long have you been married, George? Come on there, Try and sit still a minute and answer my question. How long have you been married? 12 years. Ever had any children? Come on George, Sit still, I asked you a question. Did you ever have any children? The hard brown beetles kept thudding against the dull light and whenever Michaelis heard a car go tearing along the road outside, It sounded to him like the car that stopped a few hours before. He didn't like to go into the garage because the workbench was stained where the body had been lying, So he moved uncomfortably around the office. He knew every object in it before morning and from time to time sat down beside Wilson, Trying to keep him more quiet. Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven't been there for a long time, Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you. Don't belong to any. You ought to have a church, George, For times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn't you get married in a church? Listen George, Listen to me, Didn't you get married in a church? That was a long time ago. The effort of answering broke the rhythm of his rocking. For a moment he was silent, Then the same half-knowing, Half-bewildered look came back into his faded eyes. Look in the drawer there, He said, Pointing at the desk. Which drawer? That drawer, That one. Michaelis opened the drawer nearest his hand. There was nothing in it but a small expensive dog leash made of leather and braided silver. It was apparently new. This, He inquired, Holding it up. Wilson stared and nodded. I found it yesterday afternoon. She tried to tell me about it but I knew it was something funny. You mean your wife bought it? She had it wrapped in tissue paper on her bureau. Michaelis didn't see anything odd in that and he gave Wilson a dozen reasons why his wife might have brought the dog leash. But conceivably Wilson had heard some of these same explanations before from Myrtle because he began saying, Oh my god, Again in a whisper. Then he killed her, Said Wilson. His mouth dropped open suddenly. Who did? I have a way of finding out. You're morbid, George, Said his friend. This has been a strain to you and you don't know what she's saying. You better try and sit quiet till morning. He murdered her. It was an accident, George. Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior. I know, He said definitely. I'm one of these trusting fellas and I don't think any harm to nobody. But when I get to know a thing, I know it. It was the man in that car. She ran out to speak to him and he wouldn't stop. Michaelis had seen this too but it hadn't occurred to him that there was any special significance in it. He believed that Mrs Wilson had been running away from her husband rather than trying to stop any particular car. How could she have been like that? She's a deep one, Said Wilson, As if that answered the question. Ah, He began to rock again and Michaelis stood twisting the leash in his hand. Have you got some friend that I could telephone for, George? This was a forlorn hope. He was almost sure that Wilson had no friend. There was not enough of him for his wife. He was glad a little later when he noticed a change in the room, A blue quickening by the window and realised that dawn wasn't far off. About five o'clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light. Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ash heaps where small grey clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. I spoke to her, He muttered after a long silence. I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it and I said, God knows what you've been doing, Everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God. Standing beside him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckelberg which had just emerged, Pale and enormous from the dissolving night. God sees everything, Repeated Wilson. That's an advertisement, Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room but Wilson stood there a long time, His face close to the window pane, Nodding into the twilight. By six o'clock Michaelis was worn out and grateful for the sound of a car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before who had promised to come back so he cooked breakfast for three which he and the other man ate together. Wilson was quieter now and Michaelis went home to sleep. When he awoke four hours later and hurried back to the garage, Wilson was gone. His movements, He was on foot all the time but afterwards traced to Port Roosevelt and then to Gads Hill where he bought a sandwich that he didn't eat and a cup of coffee. He must have been tired and walking slowly but he didn't reach Gads Hill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty in accounting for his time. There were boys who had seen a man acting sort of crazy and motorists at whom he stared oddly from the side of the road. Then for three hours he disappeared from view. The police, On the strength of what he said to Michaelis that he had a way of finding out, Supposed that he spent that time going from garage to garage thereabouts inquiring for a yellow car. On the other hand, No garage man who had seen him ever came forward and perhaps he had an easier, Surer way of finding out what he wanted to know. By half past two he was in West Egg where he asked somebody the way to Gatsby's house so by that time he knew Gatsby's name. At two o'clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit and left word with the butler that if anyone phoned, Word was to be brought to him at the pool. He stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress that had amused his guests during the summer and the chauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he gave instructions that the open car wasn't to be taken out under any circumstances and this was strange because the front right fender needed repair. Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started for the pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing trees. No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world material without being real where poor ghosts breathing dreams like air drifted fortuitously about like that ashen fantastic figure gliding towards him through the amorphous trees. The chauffeur he was one of Wolfsheim's protégés heard the shots afterwards he could only say that he hadn't thought anything much about them. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby's house and my rushing anxiously up the front steps was the first thing that alarmed anyone but they knew then I firmly believe with scarcely a word said four of us the chauffeur butler gardener and I hurried down to the pool there was a faint barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other with little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool a small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden the touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly chasing like the leg of transit a thin red circle in the water it was after we started with Gatsby towards the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass and the holocaust was complete to be continued

Reviews

I always found this the saddest part of the story. So many layers to Gatsby…Thanks as always for reading to me Mandy🙏🏻

Such a good chapter. Thank you for taking the time to record it.

I don’t even know what to say. But this is a powerful chapter expertly delivered.
Thank you, Mandy. 🙏 ❤️

Interesting FSF quote you shared at the beginning, Mandy, even he had trouble knowing just who this Gatsby character was. I continue to enjoy your reading 📖 Thank you.