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El Gran Gatsby
Capítulo 9, Página 24
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
o’clock
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
This-or-That’s
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.
That’s
my
Middle
West—not
the
wheat
or
the
prairies
or
the
lost
Swede
towns,
but
the
thrilling
returning
trains
of
my
youth,
and
the
street
lamps
and
sleigh
bells
in
the
frosty
dark
and
the
shadows
of
holly
wreaths
thrown
by
lighted
windows
on
the
snow.
I
am
part
of
that,
a
little
solemn
with
the
feel
of
those
long
winters,
a
little
complacent
from
growing
up
in
the
Carraway
house
in
a
city
where
dwellings
are
still
called
through
decades
by
a
family’s
name.
I
see
now
that
this
has
been
a
story
of
the
West,
after
all—Tom
and
Gatsby,
Daisy
and
Jordan
and
I,
were
all
Westerners,
and
perhaps
we
possessed
some
deficiency
in
common
which
made
us
subtly
unadaptable
to
Eastern
life.
Even
when
the
East
excited
me
most,
even
when
I
was
most
keenly
aware
of
its
superiority
to
the
bored,
sprawling,
swollen
towns
beyond
the
Ohio,
with
their
interminable
inquisitions
which
spared
only
the
children
and
the
very
old—even
then
it
had
always
for
me
a
quality
of
distortion.
West
Egg,
especially,
still
figures
in
my
more
fantastic
dreams.
I
see
it
as
a
night
scene
by
El
Greco:
a
hundred
houses,
at
once
conventional
and
grotesque,
crouching
under
a
sullen,
overhanging
sky
and
a
lustreless
moon.
In
the
foreground
four
solemn
men
in
dress
suits
are
walking
along
the
sidewalk
with
a
stretcher
on
which
lies
a
drunken
woman
in
a
white
evening
dress.
Her
hand,
which
dangles
over
the
side,
sparkles
cold
with
jewels.
Gravely
the
men
turn
in
at
a
house—the
wrong
house.
But
no
one
knows
the
woman’s
name,
and
no
one
cares.
After
Gatsby’s
death
the
East
was
haunted
for
me
like
that,
distorted
beyond
my
eyes’
power
of
correction.
So
when
the
blue
smoke
of
brittle
leaves
was
in
the
air
and
the
wind
blew
the
wet
laundry
stiff
on
the
line
I
decided
to
come
back
home.
There
was
one
thing
to
be
done
before
I
left,
an
awkward,
unpleasant
thing
that
perhaps
had
better
have
been
let
alone.
But
I
wanted
to
leave
things
in
order
and
not
just
trust
that
obliging
and
indifferent
sea
to
sweep
my
refuse
away.
I
saw
Jordan
Baker
and
talked
over
and
around
what
had
happened
to
us
together,
and
what
had
happened
afterward
to
me,
and
she
lay
perfectly
still,
listening,
in
a
big
chair.
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El Gran Gatsby — C1 Inglés | Cuentana