«Yes. We’ve been here nearly a week.» «I hope you’re not thinking of leaving?»
«Yes. We’ll go in on the afternoon bus, I’m afraid.»
«What a rotten business. I had hoped we’d all have another go at the Irati together.» «We have to go into Pamplona. We’re meeting people there.»
«What rotten luck for me. We’ve had a jolly time here at Burguete.»
«Come on in to Pamplona. We can play some bridge there, and there’s going to be a damned fine fiesta.»
«I’d like to. Awfully nice of you to ask me. I’d best stop on here, though. I’ve not much more time to fish.»
«You want those big ones in the Irati.»
«I say, I do, you know. They’re enormous trout there.» «I’d like to try them once more.»
«Do. Stop over another day. Be a good chap.» «We really have to get into town,» I said. «What a pity.»
After breakfast Bill and I were sitting warming in the sun on a bench out in front of the inn and talking it over. I saw a girl coming up the road from the centre of the town. She stopped in front of us and took a telegram out of the leather wallet that hung against her skirt.
«Por ustedes?»
I looked at it. The address was: «Barnes, Burguete.» «Yes. It’s for us.»
She brought out a book for me to sign, and I gave her a couple of coppers. The telegram was in Spanish: «Vengo Jueves Cohn.»
I handed it to Bill.
«What does the word Cohn mean?» he asked.
«What a lousy telegram!» I said. «He could send ten words for the same price. ‘I come Thursday’. That gives you a lot of dope, doesn’t it?»
«It gives you all the dope that’s of interest to Cohn.»
«We’re going in, anyway,» I said. «There’s no use trying to move Brett and Mike out here and back before the fiesta. Should we answer it?»
«We might as well,» said Bill. «There’s no need for us to be snooty.» We walked up to the post-office and asked for a telegraph blank. «What will we say?» Bill asked.
« ‘Arriving to-night.’ That’s enough.»
We paid for the message and walked back to the inn. Harris was there and the three of us walked up to Roncesvalles. We went through the monastery.
«It’s remarkable place,» Harris said, when we came out. «But you know I’m not much on those sort of places.»
«Me either,» Bill said.
«It’s a remarkable place, though,» Harris said. «I wouldn’t not have seen it. I’d been intending coming up each day.»
«It isn’t the same as fishing, though, is it?» Bill asked. He liked Harris. «I say not.»
We were standing in front of the old chapel of the monastery.
«Isn’t that a pub across the way?» Harris asked. «Or do my eyes deceive me?» «It has the look of a pub,» Bill said.
«It looks to me like a pub,» I said.
«I say,» said Harris, «let’s utilize it.» He had taken up utilizing from Bill. We had a bottle of wine apiece. Harris would not let us pay.
He talked Spanish quite well, and the innkeeper would not take our money. «I say. You don’t know what it’s meant to me to have you chaps up here.» «We’ve had a grand time, Harris.»
Harris was a little tight.
«I say. Really you don’t know how much it means. I’ve not had much fun since the war.» «We’ll fish together again, some time. Don’t you forget it, Harris.»
«We must. We have had such a jolly good time.» «How about another bottle around?»
«Jolly good idea,» said Harris.
«This is mine,» said Bill. «Or we don’t drink it.»
«I wish you’d let me pay for it. Itdoes give me pleasure, you know.» «This is going to give me pleasure,» Bill said.
The innkeeper brought in the fourth bottle. We had kept the same glasses. Harris lifted his glass.
«I say. You know this does utilize well.» Bill slapped him on the back.
«Good old Harris.»
«I say. You know my name isn’t really Harris. It’s Wilson Harris. All one name. With a hyphen, you know.»
«Good old Wilson-Harris,» Bill said. «We call you Harris because we’re so fond of you.» «I say, Barnes. You don’t know what this all means to me.»
«Come on and utilize another glass,» I said. «Barnes. Really, Barnes, you can’t know. That’s all.» «Drink up, Harris.»
We walked back down the road from Roncesvalles with Harris between us. We had lunch at the inn and Harris went with us to the bus. He gave us his card, with his address in London and his club and his business address, and as we got on the bus he handed us each an envelope. I opened mine and there were a dozen flies in it. Harris had tied them himself. He tied all his own flies.
«I say, Harris-« I began.
«No, no!» he said. He was climbing down from the bus. «They’re not first-rate flies at all. I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had.»
The bus started. Harris stood in front of the post-office. He waved. As we started along the road he turned and walked back toward the inn.
«Say,wasn’t that Harris nice?» Bill said. «I think he really did have a good time.» «Harris? You bet he did.»
«I wish he’d come into Pamplona.» «He wanted to fish.»
«Yes. You couldn’t tell how English would mix with each other, anyway.» «I suppose not.»
We got into Pamplona late in the afternoon and the bus stopped in front of the Hotel Montoya. Out in the plaza they were stringing electric-light wires to light the plaza for the fiesta. A few kids came up when the bus stopped, and a customs officer for the town made all the people getting down from the bus open their bundles on the sidewalk. We went into the hotel and on the stairs I met Montoya. He shook hands with us, smiling in his embarrassed way.
«Your friends are here,» he said. «Mr. Campbell?»
«Yes. Mr. Cohn and Mr. Campbell and Lady Ashley.»
He smiled as though there were something I would hear about. «When did they get in?»
«Yesterday. I’ve saved you the rooms you had.»
«That’s fine. Did you give Mr. Campbell the room on the plaza?» «Yes. All the rooms we looked at.»
«Where are our friends now?» «I think they went to the pelota.» «And how about the bulls?»
Montoya smiled. «To-night,» he said. «To-night at seven o’clock they bring in the Villar bulls, and to-morrow come the Miuras. Do you all go down?»
«Oh, yes. They’ve never seen a desencajonada.» Montoya put his hand on my shoulder.
«I’ll see you there.»
He smiled again. He always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us; a rather shocking but really very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something that we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand.
«Your friend, is he aficionado, too?» Montoya smiled at Bill.
«Yes. He came all the way from New York to see the San Fermines.» «Yes?» Montoya politely disbelieved. «But he’s not aficionado like you.» He put his hand on my shoulder again embarrassedly.
«Yes,» I said. «He’s a real aficionado.» «But he’s not aficionado like you are.»
Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya’s hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bullfighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back. The good ones came each year. In Montoya’s room were their photographs. The photographs were dedicated to Juanito Montoya or to his sister. The photographs of bull-fighters Montoya had really believed in were framed. Photographs of bull-fighters who had been without aficion Montoya kept in a drawer of his desk. They often had the most flattering inscriptions. But they did not mean anything. One day Montoya took them all out and dropped them in the waste-basket. He did not want them around.
We often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. I had stopped at the Montoya for several years. We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasureof discovering what we each felt. Men would come in from distant towns and before they left Pamplona stop and talk for a
few minutes with Montoya about bulls. These men were aficionados. Those who were aficionados could always get rooms even when the hotel was full. Montoya introduced me to some of them. They were always very polite at first, and it amused them very much that I should be an American. Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, but he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spiritual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a «Buen hombre.» But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain.
Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful
