The Great Gatsby(2)

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.

我家三代以来都是这个中西部城市家道殷实的头面人物。姓卡罗威的也可算是个世家，据家平传说我们是布克娄奇公爵①的后裔，但是我们家系的实际创始人却是我祖父的哥哥。他在一八五一年来到这里，买了个替身去参加南北战争，开始做起五金批发生意，也就是我父东今天还在经营的买卖。

①苏格兰贵族。

I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye—es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

我从未见过这位伯祖父，但是据说我长得像他，特别有挂在父亲办公室里的那幅铁板面孔的画像为证。我在一九一五年从纽黑文①毕业，刚好比我父亲晚四分之一个世纪，不久以后我就参加了那个称之为世界大战的延迟的条顿民族大迁徙、我在反攻中感到其乐无穷，回来以后就觉得百无聊赖了。中西部不再是世界温暖的中心，而倒像是宇宙的荒凉的边缘——于是我决定到东部去学债券生意。我所认识的人个个都是做债券生意的，因此我认为它多养活一个单身汉总不成问题。我的叔伯姑姨们商量了一番，他们怦然是在为我挑选一家预备学校②，最后才说：“呃……那就……这样吧。”面容都很严肃而犹疑。父亲答应为我提供一年的费用，然后又几经耽搁我才在一九二二年春天到东部去，自以为是一去不返的了。
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.