«Well, let him behave, then.» «He’ll behave. I’ll tell him.»
«You tell him, Jake. Tell him either he must behave or get out.» «Yes,» I said, «it would be nice for me to tell him.»
«Look, Brett. Tell Jake what Robert calls you. That is perfect, you know.» «Oh, no. I can’t.»
«Go on. We’re all friends. Aren’t we all friends, Jake?» «I can’t tell him. It’s too ridiculous.»
«I’ll tell him.»
«You won’t, Michael. Don’t be an ass.»
«He calls her Circe,» Mike said. «He claims she turns men into swine. Damn good. I wish I were one of these literary chaps.»
«He’d be good, you know,» Brett said. «He writes a good letter.» «I know,» I said. «He wrote me from San Sebastian.»
«That was nothing,» Brett said. «He can write a damned amusing letter.» «She made me write that. She was supposed to be ill.»
«I damned well was, too.»
«Come on,» I said, «we must go in and eat.» «How should I meet Cohn?» Mike said. «Just act as though nothing had happened.»
«It’s quite all right with me,» Mike said. «I’m not embarrassed.» «If he says anything, just say you were tight.»
«Quite. And the funny thing is I think I was tight.»
«Come on,» Brett said. «Are these poisonous things paid for? I must bathe before dinner.» We walked across the square. It was dark and all around the square were the lights from the
cafйs under the arcades. We walked across the gravel under the trees to the hotel. They went up-stairs and I stopped to speak with Montoya.
«Well, how did you like the bulls?» he asked. «Good. They were nice bulls.»
«They’re all right»-Montoya shook his head-«but they’re not too good.» «What didn’t you like about them?»
«I don’t know. They just didn’t give me the feeling that they were so good.» «I know what you mean.»
«They’re all right.» «Yes. They’re all right.»
«How did your friends like them?» «Fine.»
«Good,» Montoya said.
I went up-stairs. Bill was in his room standing on the balcony looking out at the square. I stood beside him.
«Where’s Cohn?»
«Up-stairs in his room.» «How does he feel?»
«Like hell, naturally. Mike was awful. He’s terrible when he’s tight.» «He wasn’t so tight.»
«The hell he wasn’t. I know what we had before we came to the cafй.» «He sobered up afterward.»
«Good. He was terrible. I don’t like Cohn, God knows, and I think it was a silly trick for him to go down to San Sebastian, but nobody has any business to talk like Mike.»
«How’d you like the bulls?»
«Grand. It’s grand the way they bring them out.» «To-morrow come the Miuras.»
«When does the fiesta start?» «Day after to-morrow.»
«We’ve got to keep Mike from getting so tight. That kind of stuff is terrible.» «We’d better get cleaned up for supper.»
«Yes. That will be a pleasant meal.» «Won’t it?»
As a matter of fact, supper was a pleasant meal. Brett wore a black, sleeveless evening dress. She looked quite beautiful. Mike acted as though nothing had happened. I had to go up and bring Robert Cohn down. He was reserved and formal, and his face was still taut and sallow, but he cheered up finally. He could not stop looking at Brett. It seemed to make him happy. It must have been pleasant for him to see her looking so lovely, and know he had been away with her and that every one knew it. They could not take that away from him. Bill was very funny. So was Michael. They were good together.
It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.
14
I do not know what time I got to bed. I remember undressing, putting on a bathrobe, and standing out on the balcony. I knew I was quite drunk, and when I came in I put on the light over the head of the bed and started to read. I was reading a book by Turgenieff. Probably I read the same two pages over several times. It was one of the stories in «A Sportsman’s Sketches.» I had read it before, but it seemed quite new. The country became very clear and the feeling of pressure in my head seemed to loosen. I was very drunk and I did not want to shut my eyes because the room would go round and round. If I kept on reading that feeling would pass.
I heard Brett and Robert Cohn come up the stairs. Cohn said good night outside the door and went on up to his room. I heard Brett go into the room next door. Mike was already in bed. He had come in with me an hour before. He woke as she came in, and they talked together.I heard them laugh. I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep. It was not necessary to read any more. I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But I could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light. The hell there isn’t!
I figured that all out once, and for six months I never slept with the electric light off. That was another bright idea. To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley.
Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.
Perhaps that wasn’t true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.
I wished Mike would not behave so terribly to Cohn, though. Mike was a bad drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bill was a good drunk. Cohn was never drunk. Mike was unpleasant after he passed a certain point. I liked to see him hurt Cohn. I wished he would not do it, though, because afterward it made me disgusted at myself. That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement. What a lot of bilge I could think up at night. What rot, I could hear Brett say it. What rot! When you were with the English you got into the habit of using English expressions in your thinking. The English spoken language-the upper classes, anyway-must have fewer words than the Eskimo. Of course I didn’t know anything about the Eskimo. Maybe the Eskimo was a fine language. Say the Cherokee. I didn’t know anything about the Cherokee, either. The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. I liked them, though. I liked the way they talked. Take Harris. Still Harris was not the upper classes.
I turned on the light again and read. I read the Turgenieff. I knew that now, reading it in the oversensitized state of my mind after much too much brandy, I would remember it somewhere, and afterward it would seem as though it had really happened to me. I would always have it. That was another good thing you paid for and then had. Some time along toward daylight I went to sleep.
The next two days in Pamplona were quiet, and there were no more rows. The town was getting ready for the fiesta. Workmen put up the gate-posts that were to shut off the side streets when the bulls were released from the corrals and came running through the streets in the morning on their way to the ring. The workmen dug holes and fitted in the timbers, each timber numbered for its regular place. Out on the plateau beyond the town employees of the bull-ring exercised picador horses, galloping them stiff-legged on the hard, sun-baked fields behind the bull-ring. The big gate of the bull-ring was open, and inside the amphitheatre was being swept. The ring was rolled and sprinkled, and carpenters replaced weakened or cracked planks in the barrera. Standing at the edge of the smooth rolled sand you could look up in the empty stands and see old women sweeping out the boxes.
Outside, the fence that led from the last Street of the town to
