It was a matter of chance that I should have
rented a house in one of the strangest communitiesin North America. It was on that slender riotousisland which extends itself due east of New York andwhere there are， among other natural curiosities，two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs， identicalin contour and separated only by a courtesy bay，jut out into the most domesticated body of saltwater in the Western Hemisphere， the great wetbarnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus storythey are both crushed flat at the contact end—buttheir physical resemblance must be a source ofperpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead.
To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon their dissimilarity in every particular except shapeand size.
I lived at West Egg， the—well， the less fashionableof the two， though this is a most superficial tag toexpress the bizarre and not a little sinister contrastbetween them. My house was at the very tip of theegg， only fifty yards from the Sound， and squeezedbetween two huge places that rented for twelve orfifteen thousand a season. The one on my right wasa colossal affair by any standard—it was a factualimitation of some H？tel de Ville in Normandy， witha tower on one side， spanking new under a thinbeard of raw ivy， and a marble swimming pool andmore than forty acres of lawn and garden. It wasGatsby’s mansion. Or rather， as I didn’t know Mr.
Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentlemanof that name. My own house was an eye-sore， butit was a small eye-sore， and it had been overlooked，so I had a view of the water， a partial view of myneighbor’s lawn， and the consoling proximity ofmillionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water，and the history of the summer really begins on theevening I drove over there to have dinner with theTom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin onceremoved and I’d known Tom in college. And justafter the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
He r h u s b a n d ， amo n g v a r i o u s p h y s i c a laccomplishments， had been one of the most
powerful ends that ever played football at NewHaven—a national figure in a way， one of thosemen who reach such an acute limited excellence attwenty-one that everything afterward savors of anticlimax.
His family were enormously wealthy—even
in college his freedom with money was a matter forreproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come eastin a fashion that rather took your breath away： forinstance he’d brought down a string of polo poniesfrom Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a manin my own generation was wealthy enough to dothat.
Why they came east I don’t know. They had spenta year in France， for no particular reason， and thendrifted here and there unrestfully wherever peopleplayed polo and were rich together. This was permanent move， said Daisy over the telephone，but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’sheart but I felt that Tom would drift on foreverseeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulenceof some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy eveningI drove over to East Egg to see two old friendswhom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was evenmore elaborate than I expected， a cheerful red andwhite Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking thebay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towardthe front door for a quarter of a mile， jumping oversun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up theside in bright vines as though from the momentumof its run. The front was broken by a line of Frenchwindows， glowing now with reflected gold， andwide open to the warm windy afternoon， and TomBuchanan in riding clothes was standing with hislegs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Nowhe was a sturdy， straw haired man of thirty with rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Twoshining， arrogant eyes had established dominanceover his face and gave him the appearance of
always leaning aggressively forward. Not even theeffeminate swank of his riding clothes could hidethe enormous power of that body—he seemed tofill those glistening boots until he strained the toplacing and you could see a great pack of muscleshifting when his shoulder moved under his thincoat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—acruel body.
His speaking voice， a gruff husky tenor， added tothe impression of fractiousness he conveyed. Therewas a touch of paternal contempt in it， even towardpeople he liked—and there were men at New
Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now， don’t think my opinion on these matters isfinal，” he seemed to say， “just because I’m strongerand more of a man than you are.” We were in thesame Senior Society， and while we were never
intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him withsome harsh， defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here，” he said， his eyesflashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm he moved a broadflat hand along the front vista， including in itssweep a sunken Italian garden， a half acre of deeppungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat thatbumped the tide off shore.
“It belonged to Demaine the oil man.” He turnedme around again， politely and abruptly. “We’ll goinside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a brightrosy-colored space， fragilely bound into the houseby French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the freshgrass outside that seemed to grow a little way intothe house. A breeze blew through the room， blewcurtains in at one end and out the other like paleflags， twisting them up toward the frosted weddingcake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the winecoloredrug， making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
