The driver helped us down with the bags. There was a crowd of kids watching the car, and the square was hot, and the trees were green, and the flags hung on their staffs, and it was good to get out of the sun and under the shade of the arcade that runs all the way around the square. Montoya was glad to see us, and shook hands and gave us good rooms looking out on the square, and then we washed and cleaned up and went downstairs in the dining-room for lunch. The driver stayed for lunch, too, and afterward we paid him and he started back to Bayonne.
There are two dining-rooms in the Montoya. One is upstairs on the second floor and looks out on the square. The other is down one floor below the level of the square and has a door that opens on the back street that the bulls pass along when they run through the streets early in the morning on their way to the ring. It is always cool in the downstairs dining-room and we had a very good lunch.
The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d’œuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit. You have to drink plenty of wine to get it all down. Robert Cohn tried to say he did not want any of the second meat course, but we would not interpret for him, and so the waitress brought him something else as a replacement, a plate of cold meats, I think. Cohn had been rather nervous ever since we had met at Bayonne. He did not know whether we knew Brett had been with him at San Sebastian, and it made him rather awkward.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘Brett and Mike ought to get in to-night.’
‘I’m not sure they’ll come,’ Cohn said.
‘Why not?’ Bill said. ‘Of course they’ll come.’
‘They’re always late,’ I said.
‘I rather think they’re not coming,’ Robert Cohn said.
He said it with an air of superior knowledge that irritated both of us.
‘I’ll bet you fifty pesetas they’re here to-night,’ Bill said. He always bets when he is angered, and so he usually bets foolishly.
‘I’ll take it,’ Cohn said. ‘Good. You remember it, Jake. Fifty pesetas.’
‘I’ll remember it myself,’ Bill said. I saw he was angry and wanted to smooth him down.
‘It’s a sure thing they’ll come,’ I said. ‘But maybe not to-night.’
‘Want to call it off?’ Cohn asked.
‘No. Why should I? Make it a hundred if you like.’
‘All right. I’ll take that.’
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Or you’ll have to make a book and give me some of it.’
‘I’m satisfied,’ Cohn said. He smiled. ‘You’ll probably win it back at bridge, anyway.’
‘You haven’t got it yet,’ Bill said.
We went out to walk around under the arcade to the Café Iruña for coffee. Cohn said he was going over and get a shave.
‘Say,’ Bill said to me, ‘have I got any chance on that bet?’
‘You’ve got a rotten chance. They’ve never been on time anywhere. If their money doesn’t come it’s a cinch they won’t get in to-night.’
‘I was sorry as soon as I opened my mouth. But I had to call him. He’s all right, I guess, but where does he get this inside stuff? Mike and Brett fixed it up with us about coming down here.’
I saw Cohn coming over across the square.
‘Here he comes.’
‘Well, let him not get superior and Jewish.’
‘The barber-shop’s closed,’ Cohn said. ‘It’s not open till four.’
We had coffee at the Iruña, sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square. After a while Bill went to write some letters and Cohn went over to the barber-shop. It was still closed, so he decided to go up to the hotel and get a bath, and I sat out in front of the café and then went for a walk in the town. It was very hot, but I kept on the shady side of the streets and went through the market and had a good time seeing the town again. I went to the Ayuntamiento and found the old gentleman who subscribes for the bull-fight tickets for me every year, and he had gotten the money I sent him from Paris and renewed my subscriptions, so that was all set. He was the archivist, and all the archives of the town were in his office. That has nothing to do with the story. Anyway, his office had a green baize door and a big wooden door, and when I went out I left him sitting among the archives that covered all the walls, and I shut both the doors, and as I went out of the building into the street the porter stopped me to brush off my coat.
‘You must have been in a motor-car,’ he said.
The back of the collar and the upper part of the shoulders were grey with dust.
‘From Bayonne.’
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘I knew you were in a motor-car from the way the dust was.’ So I gave him two copper coins.
At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the facade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefinger and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun. The sunlight was hot and hard, and I crossed over beside some buildings, and walked back along side-streets to the hotel.
At dinner that night we found that Robert Cohn had taken a bath, had had a shave and a haircut and a shampoo, and something put on his hair afterward to make it stay down. He was nervous, and I did not try to help him any. The train was due in at nine o’clock from San Sebastian, and, if Brett and Mike were coming, they would be on it. At twenty minutes to nine we were not half through dinner. Robert Cohn got up from the table and said he would go to the station. I said I would go with him, just to devil him. Bill said he would be damned if he would leave his dinner. I said we would be right back.
We walked to the station. I was enjoying Cohn’s nervousness. I hoped Brett would be on the train. At the station the train was late, and we sat on a baggage-truck and waited outside in the dark. I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn—nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.
After a while we heard the train-whistle way off below on the other side of the plateau, and then we saw the headlight coming up the hill. We went inside the station and stood with a crowd of people just back of the gates, and the train came in and stopped, and everybody started coming out through the gates.
They were not in the crowd. We waited till everybody had gone through and out of the station and gotten into buses, or taken cabs, or were walking with their friends or relatives through the dark into the town.
‘I knew they wouldn’t come,’ Robert said. We were going back to the hotel.
‘I thought they might,’ I said.
Bill was eating fruit when we came in and finishing a bottle of wine.
‘Didn’t come, eh?’
‘No.’
‘Do you mind if I give you that hundred pesetas in the morning, Cohn?’ Bill asked. ‘I haven’t changed any money here yet.’
‘Oh, forget about it,’ Robert Cohn said. ‘Let’s bet on something else. Can you bet on bull-fights?’
‘You could,’ Bill said, ‘but you don’t need to.’
‘It would be like betting
