“And the Extremadura road?” asked the old waiter, still holding on to the door. “Is it very dangerous there?”
“No,” said Al. “It’s fine up there. You don’t need to worry about him up there.”
“God bless you,” said the waiter. “God guard you and keep you.”
Outside in the dark street, Al said, “Jees he’s kind of confused politically, isn’t he?”
“He is a good guy,” I said. “I’ve known him for a long time.”
“He seems like a good guy,” Al said. “But he ought to get wise to himself politically.”
The room at the Florida was crowded. They were playing the gramophone and it was full of smoke and there was a crap game going on the floor. Comrades kept coming in to use the bathtub and the room smelt of smoke, soap, dirty uniforms, and steam from the bathroom.
The Spanish girl called Manolita, very neat, demurely dressed, with a sort of false French chic, with much joviality, much dignity and closely set cold eyes, was sitting on the bed talking with an English newspaper man. Except for the gramophone it wasn’t very noisy.
“It is your room, isn’t it?” the English newspaper man said.
“It’s in my name at the desk,” I said. “I sleep in it sometimes.”
“But whose is the whisky?” he asked.
“Mine,” said Manolita. “They drank that bottle so I got another.”
“You’re a good girl, daughter,” I said. “That’s three I owe you.”
“Two,” she said. “The other was a present.”
There was a huge cooked ham, rosy and white edged in a half-opened tin on the table beside my typewriter and a comrade would reach up, cut himself a slice of ham with his pocket knife, and go back to the crap game. I cut myself a slice of ham.
“You’re next on the tub,” I said to Al. He had been looking around the room.
“It’s nice here,” he said. “Where did the ham come from?”
“We bought it from the intendencia of one of the brigades,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Who’s we?”
“He and I,” she said, turning her head toward the English correspondent. “Don’t you think he’s cute?”
“Manolita has been most kind,” said the Englishman. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Later on I might want to use the bed but that won’t be until much later.”
“We can have a party in my room,” Manolita said. “You aren’t cross are you, Henry?”
“Never,” I said. “Who are the comrades shooting craps?”
“I don’t know,” said Manolita. “They came in for baths and then they stayed to shoot craps. Everyone has been very nice. You know my bad news?”
“No.”
“It’s very bad. You knew my fiancé who was in the police and went to Barcelona?”
“Yes. Sure.”
Al went into the bathroom.
“Well, he was shot in an accident and I haven’t any one I can depend on in police circles and he never got me the papers he had promised me and today I heard I was going to be arrested.”
“Why?”
“Because I have no papers and they say I hang around with you people and with people from the brigades all the time so I am probably a spy. If my fiancé had not gotten himself shot it would have been all right. Will you help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing will happen to you if you’re all right.”
“I think I’d better stay with you to be sure.”
“And if you’re not all right that would be fine for me, wouldn’t it?”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“No. If you get in trouble call me up. I never heard you ask anybody any military questions. I think you’re all right.”
“I’m really all right,” she said then, leaning over, away from the Englishman. “You think it’s all right to stay with him? Is he all right?”
“How do I know?” I said. “I never saw him before.”
“You’re being cross,” she said. “Let’s not think about it now but everyone be happy and go out to dinner.”
I went over to the crap game.
“You want to go out to dinner?”
“No, comrade,” said the man handling the dice without looking up. “You want to get in the game?”
“I want to eat.”
“We’ll be here when you get back,” said another crap shooter. “Come on, roll, I’ve got you covered.”
“If you run into any money bring it up here to the game.”
There was one in the room I knew besides Manolita. He was from the Twelfth Brigade and he was playing the gramophone. He was a Hungarian, a sad Hungarian, not one of the cheerful kind.
“Salud camarade,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Don’t you shoot craps?” I asked him.
“I haven’t that sort of money,” he said. “They are aviators with contracts. Mercenaries … They make a thousand dollars a month. They were on the Teruel front and now they have come here.”
“How did they come up here?”
“One of them knows you. But he had to go out to his field. They came for him in a car and the game had already started.”
“I’m glad you came up,” I said. “Come up any time and make yourself at home.”
“I came to play the new discs,” he said. “It does not disturb you?”
“No. It’s fine. Have a drink.”
“A little ham,” he said.
One of the crap shooters reached up and cut a slice of ham.
“You haven’t seen this guy Henry around that owns the place, have you?” he asked me.
“That’s me.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Want to get in the game?”
“Later on,” I said.
“O.K.,” he said. Then his mouth full of ham, “Listen you tar heel bastid. Make your dice hit the wall and bounce.”
“Won’t make no difference to you, comrade,” said the man handling the dice.
Al came out of the bathroom. He looked all clean except for some smudges around his eyes.
“You can take those off with a towel,” I said.
“What?”
“Look at yourself once more in the mirror.”
“It’s too steamy.” he said. “To hell with it, I feel clean.”
“Let’s eat,” I said. “Come on, Manolita. You know each other?”
I watched her eyes run over Al.
“How are you?” Manolita said.
“I say that is a sound idea,” the Englishman said. “Do let’s eat. But where?”
“Is that a crap game?” Al said.
“Didn’t you see it when you came in?”
“No,” he said. “All I saw was the ham.”
“It’s a crap game.”
“You go and eat,” Al said. “I’m staying here.”
As we went out there were six of them on the floor and Al Wagner was reaching up to cut a slice of ham.
“What do you do, comrade?” I heard one of the flyers say to Al.
“Tanks.”
“Tell me they aren’t any good any more,” said the flyer.
“Tell you a lot of things,” Al said. “What you got there? Some dice?”
“Want to look at them?”
“No,” said Al. “I want to handle them.”
We went down the hall, Manolita, me and the tall Englishman, and found the boys had left already for the Gran Via restaurant. The Hungarian had stayed behind to replay the new discs. I was very hungry and the food at the Gran Via was lousy. The two who were making the film had already eaten and gone back to work on the bad camera.
This restaurant was in the basement and you had to pass a guard and go through the kitchen and down a stairs to get to it. It was a racket.
They had a millet and water soup, yellow rice with horse meat in it, and oranges for dessert. There had been another dish of chickpeas with sausage in it that everybody said was terrible but it had run out. The newspaper men all sat at one table and the other tables were filled with officers and girls from Chicote’s, people from the censorship, which was then in the telephone building across the street, and various unknown citizens.
The restaurant was run by an anarchist syndicate and they sold you wine that was all stamped with the label of the royal cellars and the date it had been put in the bins. Most of it was so old that it was either corked or just plain faded out and gone to pieces. You can’t drink labels and I sent three bottles back as bad before we got a drinkable one. There was a row about this.
The waiters didn’t know the different wines. They just brought you a bottle of wine and you took your chances. They were as different from the Chicote’s waiters as black from white. These waiters were all snotty, all over-tipped and they regularly had special dishes such as lobster or chicken that they sold extra for gigantic prices. But these had all been bought up before we got there so we just drew the soup, the rice and the oranges. The place always made me angry because the waiters were a crooked lot of profiteers and it was about as expensive to eat in, if you had one of the special dishes, as 21 or the Colony in New York.
We were sitting at the table with a bottle of wine that just wasn’t bad, you know you could taste it starting to go, but it wouldn’t justify making a row about, when Al Wagner came in. He looked around the room, saw us and came over.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“They broke me,” he said.
“It didn’t take very long.”
“Not with those guys,” he said. “That’s a big game. What
