“Gin and tonic. Schweppes Indian tonic water. This was a very fancy café before the war and this used to cost five pesetas when there were only seven pesetas to the dollar. We just found out they still have the tonic water and they’re charging the same price for it. There’s only a case left.”
“Is a good drink all right. Tell me, how was this city before the war?”
“Fine. Like now only lots to eat.”
The waiter came over and leaned toward the table.
“And if I don’t?” he said. “It is my responsibility.”
“If you wish to, go to the telephone and call this number. Write it down.”
He wrote it down. “Ask for Pepé,” I said.
“I have nothing against him,” the waiter said. “But it is the Causa. Certainly such a man is dangerous to our cause.”
“Don’t the other waiters recognize him?”
“I think so. But no one has said anything. He is an old client.”
“I am an old client, too.”
“Perhaps then he is on our side now, too.”
“No,” I said. “I know he is not.”
“I have never denounced anyone.”
“It is your problem. Maybe one of the other waiters will denounce him.”
“No. Only the old waiters know him and the old waiters do not denounce.”
“Bring another of the yellow gins and some bitters,” I said. “There is tonic water still in the bottle.”
“What’s he talk about?” asked John. “I only understand little bit.”
“There is a man here that we both knew in the old days. He used to be a marvelous pigeon shot and I used to see him at shoots. He is a fascist and for him to come here now, no matter what his reasons, is very foolish. But he was always very brave and very foolish.”
“Show him to me.”
“There at that table with the flyers.”
“Which one?”
“With the very brown face; the cap over one eye. Who is laughing now.”
“He is fascist?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a closest I see fascist since Fuentes del Ebro. Is a many fascist here?”
“Quite a few from time to time.”
“Is drink the same drink as you,” said John. “We drink that other people think we fascists, eh? Listen you ever been South America, West Coast, Magallanes?”
“No.”
“Is all right. Only too many oc-toe-pus.”
“Too many what?”
“Oc-toe-pus.” He pronounced it with the accent on the toe as oc-toepus. “You know with the eight arms.”
“Oh,” I said. “Octopus.”
“Oc-toe-pus,” said John. “You see I am diver too. Is a good place to work all right make plenty money only too many oc-toe-pus.”
“Did they bother you?”
“I don’t know about that. First time I go down in Magallanes harbor I see oc-toe-pus. He is stand on his feet like this.” John pointed his fingers on the table and brought his hands up, at the same time bringing up his shoulders and raising his eyebrows. “He is stand up taller than I am and he is look me right in the eye. I jerk cord for them to bring me up.”
“How big was he, John?”
“I cannot say absolutely because the glass in the helmet make distort a little. But the head was big around more than four feet anyway. And he was stand on his feet like on tip-toes and look at me like this.” (He peered in my face.) “So when I get up out of water they take off the helmet and so I say I don’t go down there any more. Then the man of the job says, ‘What a matter with you, John? The oc-toe-pus is more afraid of you than you afraid of oc-toe-pus.’ So I say to him ‘Impossible!’ What you say we drink some more this fascist drink?”
“All right,” I said.
I was watching the man at the table. His name was Luis Delgado and the last time I had seen him had been in 1933 shooting pigeons at Saint Sebastian and I remembered standing with him up on top of the stand watching the final of the big shoot. We had a bet, more than I could afford to bet, and I believed a good deal more than he could afford to lose that year, and when he paid coming down the stairs, I remembered how pleasant he was and how he made it seem a great privilege to pay. Then I remembered our standing at the bar having a martini, and I had that wonderful feeling of relief that comes when you have bet yourself out of a bad hole and I was wondering how badly the bet had hit him. I had shot rottenly all week and he had shot beautifully but drawn almost impossible birds and he had bet on himself steadily.
“Should we match a duro?” he asked.
“You really want to?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“For how much?”
He took out a notecase and looked in it and laughed.
“I’d say for anything you like,” he said. “But suppose we say for eight thousand pesetas. That’s what seems to be there.”
That was close to a thousand dollars then.
“Good,” I said, all the fine inner quiet gone now and the hollow that gambling makes come back again. “Who’s matching who?”
“I’ll match you.”
We shook the heavy five-peseta pieces in our cupped hands; then each man laid his coin on the back of his left hand, each coin covered with the right hand.
“What’s yours?” he asked.
I uncovered the big silver piece with the profile of Alfonso XIII as a baby showing.
“Heads,” I said.
“Take these damned things and be a good man and buy me a drink.” He emptied out the notecase. “You wouldn’t like to buy a good Purdey gun would you?”
“No,” I said. “But look, Luis, if you need some money—”
I was holding the stiffly folded, shiny-heavy-paper, green thousandpeseta notes toward him.
“Don’t be silly, Enrique,” he said. “We’ve been gambling, haven’t we?”
“Yes. But we know each other quite well.”
“Not that well.”
“Right,” I said. “You’re the judge of that. Then what will you drink?”
“What about a gin and tonic? That’s a marvelous drink you know.”
So we had a gin and tonic and I felt very badly to have broken him and I felt awfully good to have won the money, and a gin and tonic never tasted better to me in all my life. There is no use to lie about these things or pretend you do not enjoy winning; but this boy Luis Delgado was a very pretty gambler.
“I don’t think if people gambled for what they could afford it would be very interesting. Do you, Enrique?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been able to afford it.”
“Don’t be silly. You have lots of money.”
“No I haven’t,” I said. “Really.”
“Oh, everyone has money,” he said. “It’s just a question of selling something or other to get hold of it.”
“I don’t have much. Really.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’ve never known an American who wasn’t rich.”
I guess that was the truth all right. He wouldn’t have met them at the Ritz bar or at Chicote’s either in those days. And now he was back in Chicote’s and all the Americans he would meet there now were the kind he would never have met; except me, and I was a mistake. But I would have given plenty not to have seen him in there.
Still, if he wanted to do an absolutely damn fool thing like that it was his own business. But as I looked at the table and remembered the old days I felt badly about him and I felt very badly too that I had given the waiter the number of the counterespionage bureau in Seguridad headquarters. He could have had Seguridad by simply asking on the telephone. But I had given him the shortest cut to having Delgado arrested in one of those excesses of impartiality, righteousness and Pontius Pilatry, and the always-dirty desire to see how people act under an emotional conflict, that makes writers such attractive friends.
The waiter came over.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I would never denounce him myself,” I said, now trying to undo for myself what I had done with the number. “But I am a foreigner and it is your war and your problem.”
“But you are with us.”
“Absolutely and always. But it does not include denouncing old friends.”
“But for me?”
“For you it is different.”
I knew this was true and there was nothing else to say, only I wished I had never heard of any of it.
My curiosity as to how people would act in this case had been long ago, and shamefully, satisfied. I turned to John and did not look at the table where Luis Delgado was sitting. I knew he had been flying with the fascists for over a year, and here he was, in a loyalist uniform, talking to three young loyalist flyers of the last crop that had been trained in France.
None of those new kids would know him and I wondered whether he had come to try to steal a plane or for what. Whatever he was there for, he was a fool to come to Chicote’s now.
“How do you feel, John?” I asked.
“Feel good,” said John. “Is a good drink hokay. Makes me feel little bit drunk maybe. Is a good for the buzzing in the head.”
The waiter came over. He was very excited.
“I have denounced him,” he said.
“Well then,” I said, “now you haven’t any problem.”
“No,” he said proudly. “I have denounced him. They are on their way now to get him.”
“Let’s go,” I said to John. “There is going to be some trouble here.”
“Is best go then,” said John. “Is a plenty trouble always come, even if you do best to
