Chapter Text
Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.
— Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
•
The tale which I am about to tell you is not a happy one. It is not a great story of a soldier's honour, nor a tragic tale of noble sacrifice. It's far from the Shakespearean romances filled with passion, although it too is one without a satisfying ending. This tale, my tale, although not entirely, is one of selfishness and greed, a bitter glimpse into the monstrosity of the human kind and a performance of shameful need for that which remains out of reach.
Looking back I feel scarcely more than disgust for myself and regret about my actions. What I have done should not have been done, not even thought of as possible, but damned to stay forever in the throes of imagination and hoping. The stale air inside my cabin still reeks of desperation as I begin reminiscing about the day, which would change my life forever.
•••
My father pushed me out of my childhood home with countless pieces of thoughtful advice and the intention of steering me into a direction which would later ensure me stable income and recognition. So when I arrived at Yale after leaving Minnesota, I began my studies in medicine.
It was never one of my dreams, becoming a doctor. I was a rather ignorant child, and later on in life I began to take on the roles that were expected of me without much thought about my own desires. The polite son, the teenager with an eager spirit, the well-educated and mannerly student. In the end, I turned out to be a great actor. And while neither my mother nor my father had verbally pushed me to choose any field of study, they surely seemed relieved and fairly happy when they found out I would not be pursuing my interest in arts and humanities.
The subjects came to me easily, at the time. I had no trouble remembering the latin names, understanding the basics of chemistry or biological processes. Yet I found myself bored. Studying from illustrations and poorly worded books was rather dull, and I began to grow tired of the constant focus on theoretics. Medicine didn't seem to compel me, but still, despite the weariness, I persisted. Quitting or changing faculties didn't occur to me as something I could do back then.
It was only when we were first presented with a dead body that the numbing haze had faded out, my heart woke up from its stupor and blood started flowing to my brain quickly enough to keep me on my feet, and keep me interested once again. I was no stranger to death. A few of my rather distant family members had sadly passed away when I was still a child, yet none of them had an open casket funeral. Only in that chilly classroom did I first find out how still and calm and indifferent you look once you are dead.
The body laying on the autopsy table was of a man in his middle thirties. He had supposedly died of a heart attack, which we were about to confirm. His body was in perfect condition, only paler than the usual man you saw walking down the street. No signs of any struggle or pain, no scratches from the inevitable fall, simply untouched. As if the man was not at all dead, but only asleep. Taking a nap on this fine Friday afternoon before dinner with some important business associates. It made me wonder if there was a way to make him wake back up.
That thought would not leave me for a while. During that time I dived into research about the possibilities of bringing a person back to life, losing hours of sleep I would not get back and showing up to lectures swaying on my feet. I did not find much, except for some experiments attempted on frogs and mice which involved applying electric shocks, but that was only proved to make the muscles constrict and relax on cue — not a word about reviving the nervous system or restarting blood flow which I thought necessary for a life to be breathed back into a body.
After some time I gave it up, somehow let the idea flee my mind as if it had never occupied it in the first place, written off as a young man's foolish ambition. And so before I was considered a madman for supposedly playing God, I continued my studies with renewed vigor.
Soon after I had obtained my license came the war, and I was called up for service as a military surgeon. The nightmare of it is mostly a blur when I try to remember the details, and I am not displeased with the fact, for what memories I have left still make me wake up in cold sweat. Truth is I have not forgotten the face of any of the men that died in my hands. Gunshot wounds, shrapnel, blown off limbs. Some days in the field hospital I was walking through puddles of blood, the others I was watching the few men left as they got better or succumbed to severe blood loss or infection. Most of them were boys, barely old enough to carry a weapon, least of all be forced to use it and die while yielding it — and I said that while I myself was still considerably young. Every night I heard their screams and moans as they cried out for their families, for God, for death.
When I came back home, I was restless. I needed to keep my hands busy with work or my throat burning with liquor, at that moment I didn't care much for which. I needed to shake off the still fresh memory of the intense stench of blood, rot and decay. One day I asked for a recommendation to find a job somewhere more active, swamped even. Anything to keep my mind and body occupied for long enough to pass out on my bed after returning home. A few days later I got a proposition regarding a position in a hospital on Long Island, near where my cousin Daisy had moved not so long ago from Chicago with her husband and small child. Without a second thought, I accepted and packed my things as soon as I found an outstanding offer for a cottage for 80 dollars a month.
For a while, everything seemed to be going my way, luck stuck to the sole of my shoe as if the East was summoning me with its turmoil.
•••
I didn't expect to be charmed by Gatsby. To become fond of his radiant smile or his determined yet skittish and abrupt personality. Especially for it to take place so quickly, and for myself to start regarding him as a friend.
He was the epitome of what I was taught to despise from a very young age. Newly rich, most definitely tangled in some illegal business, careless and without any regard for the smaller man. His image was of the mysterious host, someone with secrets to hide. A cruel man, but a great one. Nobody knew what his business was, but everybody knew to keep themselves at a safe distance. At least that was what I thought before I met him.
I was struck by his kindness. I didn't recognize him the first time I saw him — perhaps because of the image of Gatsby in my mind which turned out to be so vastly different from what I had witnessed. Instead of the brute man pretending to fit in with the well-mannered rich crowds like a true wolf in sheep's clothing, a sketchy bon vivant with a very specific definition of fun, I was presented with a calm, polite, and thoughtful man around my age with a smile that I was sure could make many women swoon. It was all in the presence, the way he behaved so casually up until the moment you notice something, and begin to doubt. There was an air around him that made you trust him and his words immediately after they spilled from his mouth. After all, how could a man so courteous bother himself with lying?
With time I found out that he could, yet despite the fact that he buried himself in half-truths with each breath he didn't do so with malice. Never that. His eyes were shining with desperation, the need for his little act to be believed in, and even his confident posture and seemingly self-assured behaviour couldn't hide them, nor the quiet panic when it became clear that I caught him red handed. We never spoke about why he did that, so I can only assume that it was all a part of his grand scheme to reunite with my cousin.
In his unusual light-hearted hope, he stood out from the crowd that surrounded him. The polar opposite of Tom, my cousin's husband and a colleague from my time at Yale whom I found greatly annoying and self centered despite being deeply insecure. He cared; about his guests, about his friends, about Daisy. He tried to make himself visible and live up to the expectations he set for himself so long ago. Even if the people around him didn't see it, didn't concern themselves with giving that kindness back.
Gatsby realised the futility of his pursuit when it was far too late. Too focused on his futuristic visions and the idealised memories that were destined to stay in the past. He opened up to me once, the night before the tragedy. It was late and he was a little drunk, the night air was warm and suffocating, the stars were looking down at their reflections in the water and as he stood on the pier alone, I walked over to him having an unclear sense that he had a need for company.
He told me everything. Well, of the beginning. He told me about Daisy's kindness, her cleverness, her father. Of the happiness that he felt when they were together, the lightness. For once he was something worthwhile, he seemed to be declaring, wanting to grasp it once more. He explained why they were separated and how they lost touch when the war started and the letters went missing.
"I used to love her very much, old sport," he said, staring across the bay with a kind of longing I could not understand back then. Not yet, despite the fact that my fascination has put down deep roots at that point. The green light seemed to be dimmer than usual. "I want her to be happy."
He was sure he could give her that. Somehow he was convinced of the agony she felt in her marriage with Tom, and he wanted to give her an opportunity to leave, a choice, certain that it would be obvious and quick. He failed to understand that her situation was not as simple as he would've liked or imagined, that time was a mighty skilled killer, and that the world was inherently cruel.
Memory contorts and becomes what we think we remember. Nobody can correct us, because no one else was there when it happened. I can recall all my past encounters with him and show you the image of what I wanted to see, of what I perhaps had actually seen, of the mirage that blinded me with hope, but it would be of no use.
The light flickers.
•••
I remember the dawning realisation of what had happened like nothing else I have ever experienced. The dark, bottomless pit that appeared inside my chest as I started running towards the pool was an unwanted guest and one which was hard to get rid of. Once it was there, it never truly left, often masquerading as other feelings, just as intense.
No one screamed at the sight of his body floating atop the water. I wanted to, I think, but felt my throat constricting as bile rose up from my stomach so I only swallowed it back down, staring. His hair surrounded his head like a halo, his whole person eerily unmoving. Sunlight reflected off of the water's surface and seemed to be illuminating him like an eager spotlight. Blood diluted around him, giving it a rosy hue. The scene felt fitting, and I remember hating that I thought such a thing.
We moved his body inside and laid him on a couch where he would be staying for the next hours. I found that I didn't want to leave his side at all. I felt an obligation to him, to myself, to wait until the arrival of authorities and see the case to its end. I touched his forehead, moving damp hair out of his face even though it probably didn't bother him anymore. Most definitely. His skin was cold, and as my fingertips grazed it a shiver ran through my whole body.
I remember the feeling of his touch very vividly, for, like everything else about him, it was unusual. Gatsby's touch burned. His skin ran hot, bordering on feverish, as if the warmth of his personality needed to be represented in physical form too. I felt it for the first time when he had grabbed my arm when he took me for lunch and apparently felt the need to drag me along inside the busy place so he wouldn't lose me out of sight before we caught a table — the heat emanating from his fingers seeped through the fabric of my sleeve.
The man was at ease with showing his affection and did so freely, so I quickly got used to his grabbing, moving me around, swift touches and general closeness when he lingered near. I thought it another part of his act. My closest family was never touchy, but Daisy? It was like a special kind of magnetic field was pulling her towards other people. Leaning towards them, laying a hand on them. And so he mimicked.
The sudden clash as reality sank its claws into my flesh was brutal. The nausea came back, and I lowered myself to the floor, sitting with my back resting against the couch. For the first time in a long while, I didn't know what to do. I felt lost, as if a small child who had lost the hem of its mother's skirt while out in a crowded space.
I hadn't known him long, but I felt as if I had just lost a dear friend that I had known for years. Someone I learnt to trust and someone who, I thought, trusted me equally as much. My reaction seemed to me inadequate, and yet I struggled to think of how I should have responded instead. The bond between me and Gatsby, despite being short lived, was strong, and losing it felt not unlike losing a limb, a possibility of something great.
A person who became a part of my everyday life, someone whose face I hoped to see in a crowd, was suddenly gone. Erased. To say it was wrong was to say nothing, but my vocabulary is to this day restricted and I have trouble with encapturing the emotion which I had then experienced.
I missed him. Already, I did. His smile and bright eyes full of awe at the smallest wonders of the modern world. The ease with which he carried himself, the constant need to please, the awkward way he tried to talk himself out of a situation that involved me witnessing him doing something related to his… let's call it work. The way he was quickly jumping between feelings like joy and sorrow, deep calmness and utter panic. I missed him and what we had, and I also missed what we could've had.
All the days we spent together haunted me just as much as those we would've if today never happened. They surrounded me like a pack of wolves, entrapping their prey and toying with it before mercifully putting an end to its struggle. My mind kept thinking of various what ifs, endless scenarios that I now could only dream of becoming true. I could've written books about all the possibilities which I could only desire and never get to have. But instead I buried myself in them and in the dark, suffocating feelings which now harassed me.
I sat next to him for a long time, a lone soldier watching over Christ's tomb, until the sun had set and the first blinking eyes appeared in the night sky. Brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, the unlikely, fantastic figure I saw from my cottage's window. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. Perhaps he sensed it. Perhaps the thought was foolish.
Officers came, assessed the crime scene, put some tape over the place, took the statements of witnesses and disappeared again, not to come back the next day. I knew that no justice would be served only hearing their voices and too loud footsteps, but I didn't have the strength to fight for it. At some point Gatsby's butler came in to check on me but I dismissed him, told him he should probably start looking for a new employer. It only made me feel worse.
When I was left alone with him, not one other soul in the whole building, I allowed myself to cry. The heavy void clawing at my heart, scratching at the inside of my ribcage, seemed to be escaping me alongside the tears, its borders melting off and lessening it more and more. My vision blurred as my eyes stung, but as I wept the weight inside my chest got smaller and smaller until at some point it became bearable. As cathartic as it was, I knew that the feeling was temporary. That the horrible emptiness would come back.
I didn't understand the sorrow which overcame me. I didn't feel entitled to such hurt. In an attempt at soothing myself I tried to bury that guilt in a corner of my mind so deep as to never reach it again. It was the least I could do to put myself back together, if only temporarily, for I was, very much like a crystal glass filled with bitter scotch thrown to the floor in anger, frozen in time, waiting to shatter. I needed to allow it.
With effort, I pushed myself off of the floor, breath still uneven, and I wiped at my cheeks as I looked at Gatsby's face again. I took his hand in my own and squeezed it, wanting him to give me the courage to leave before I would need to collapse to the floor again crushed under the weight of grief.
I felt nothing. After a moment I gently put his hand back down, resisting the urge to give it a sharp pull in a desperate attempt to startle him into waking, and turned to leave, already knowing that I would come back. To finish what needed to be finished, to make sure that he would get a worthy goodbye. To selfishly ease the feeling of something tugging at my heart which began as soon as I started walking away.
•••
They paint the dead before the funeral. To make their face look less pale, to let our last memory of them be beautiful, to make death more distant. They're wearing their best clothes, their hair is neatly combed. It's almost as if they were getting ready to go to a gala instead of laying in a wooden box at their own funeral.
Gatsby suffered a gunshot wound to the chest that grazed the heart and collapsed his left lung. He died within minutes from the shot. The gaping hole was now covered by his carefully buttoned shirt and suit jacket. His lip was more tinted than it ever appeared to be when he was still alive, but there was not much I could do about that now. I doubted that anyone else would notice. He looked so peaceful like that, his brow for once not furrowed with concern.
When I saw him like this for the first time I had a sudden itch to take him by the shoulders and shake him awake, to tell him to stop playing his games and move on. I didn't, only because I knew that it wouldn't actually make him open his eyes again. A familiar feeling crept up the back of my neck.
At that point I had phoned everyone I could think of, only proving that in death a man is left to himself, alone at last. Still, I wanted to get someone for him. Some sense of obligation filled me, the need to prove that a man like him was not lonely in the end. I looked to him and it was like I could hear him speaking to me:
“Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.”
And so I did. I tried. I emptied the phone book he kept in his desk, trying each number until somebody answered. Being sure that I have spoken with various criminals and some people involved in rather shady businesses — I have still not gathered one person that would confirm their presence at the funeral.
The only consolation was that of Henry C. Gatz's arrival. A glimpse into Gatsby's past was something unexpected after he was rendered unable of speech, but not unwelcome. I was glad that he had shown up, even though it did surprise me at first. Jay did not seem to me a family man, forever focused on anything but the present and never taking on true responsibility.
As Gatsby whispered to me from his resting place, his father kept telling me about his son's now dormant potential, his sharp mind and determination, a strict perseverance learned from a very young age. He would have changed the world around, shook it, made it a whole lot of a better place. What a waste, he seemed to be saying as if it wasn't his son who had died, but a very reliable milking cow.
I heard his words, but my mind was off to somewhere else entirely. I kept thinking back to my days at university, to those dead bodies that we took apart, to the piles of bodies of young soldiers who died without reason, to the feeling of uselessness and helplessness, to the many scientific papers i have read trying to disprove my madness, to the weight of Gatsby's inanimate flesh when we carried him inside. It all felt wrong.
For your safety, my own peace of mind and clarity of conscience in my last hours, I will omit the exact path that my mind's train of thought took when I had made the decision that I made. This is a precaution that I feel the need to make. I do not take pride in my actions or their success which now only fills me with terror's ancient coldness. But that day, when I looked at his pale face once again, I was sure.
That casket would be buried empty.
•••
You see, Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning—
One fine morning—
One fine morning…