Chapter II
About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes10 –[35] a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys andrising smoke and finally, with atranscendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of greycars crawls along an invisibletrack, gives out aghastlycreak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up animpenetrable cloud whichscreens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and thespasms ofbleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic – theirretinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wildwag of anoculist set them there to fatten his[36] practice in theborough ofQueens and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemndumping ground.
The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to letbarges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at thedismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress.
The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintancesresented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table,sauntered about chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her – but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.
“We’re getting off!” he insisted.“I want you to meet my girl.”
I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and
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