The Sun Also Rises

Jake Barnes, an American journalist in 1920s Paris wounded in the war in a way that has left him unable to consummate a love affair, narrates the story of his circle of expatriate friends -- heavy drinkers, restless travelers, lost in the aftermath of the Great War. At its center is his impossible love for Lady Brett Ashley, a woman who moves through men the way Jake moves through countries, and the week in Pamplona when the running of the bulls lays bare every wound they have been drinking to forget.

Book I

Chapter 1

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. He cared nothing for boxing but learned it painfully to counteract the feeling of inferiority he carried from being treated as a Jew there. Spider Kelly taught him, overmatched him, and flattened his nose permanently. By his last year nobody remembered him.

Cohn came from one of the richest Jewish families in New York. He was shy and nice, and Princeton made him bitter. He married the first girl who was kind to him, had three children, lost most of his inheritance, and hardened under domestic unhappiness---then his wife left him for a miniature-painter, which turned out to be a healthful shock.

He drifted to California, backed a literary review until the money ran out, and a forceful woman named Frances took him in hand and urged they go to Europe so he could write. They settled in Paris. For two and a half years Cohn had two friends: Braddocks, his literary friend, and me, his tennis friend. He wrote a novel---not as bad as the critics said, though very poor.

I first noticed Frances's hold on him one night at dinner when I mentioned a girl in Strasbourg and somebody kicked me under the table. Frances's face hardened. Cohn walked me out afterward, anxious. We settled on Senlis instead. I watched him walk back to the café. I rather liked him, and evidently she led him quite a life.

Chapter 2

That winter Cohn took his novel to New York and a good publisher accepted it. Several women were nice to him, and he came back changed---not so simple, not so nice. The praise went to his head. He'd also been reading W. H. Hudson's The Purple Land, a sinister book if read too late in life. Cohn took every word literally.

He came into my office. "Would you like to go to South America, Jake?"

"No."

"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it."

"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters."

We went downstairs for a drink. "Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?"

"Going to another country doesn't make any difference. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."

But he was sick of Paris and sick of the Quarter---two stubbornnesses you couldn't do anything about. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too.

Back in the office he fell asleep in the big chair. I shook his shoulder. "I can't do it," he muttered. "Nothing will make me do it." Then he woke, blinked. "Did I talk out loud?" He hadn't slept all night. Talking, he said.

Chapter 3

It was a warm spring night and I sat on the terrace of the Napolitain after Robert had gone, watching it get dark and the electric signs come on. A good-looking girl walked past, came back, caught my eye, and sat down.

"Well, what will you drink?"

"Pernod."

"That's not good for little girls."

"Little girl yourself."

Her name was Georgette. We rode in a horse-cab up the Avenue de l'Opéra, through the Tuileries. She touched me and I put her hand away. "What's the matter? You sick?" "Yes." "Everybody's sick. I'm sick, too."

We ate at a small restaurant. "I got hurt in the war," I told her when she asked what was wrong. "Oh, that dirty war." Just then Braddocks called from the other room---he had a whole party there: Cohn, Frances, Mrs. Braddocks, others. They were all going to a dancing-club. I introduced Georgette as my fiancée, Mademoiselle Leblanc. Her real name was Hobin. Frances spoke rapid French at her. "Do I have to talk to her?" Georgette asked me.

The dancing-club was a bal musette in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. The proprietor played accordion with bells on his ankle. It was hot. Two taxis pulled up and a crowd of young men got out---some in jerseys, wavy hair, white hands. With them was Brett. She looked very lovely and she was very much with them.

I was angry. They always made me angry. I walked down the street and had a beer at the next bar. When I came back Georgette had been taken up by them---they were all dancing with her.

Cohn was sitting at a table. A rising new novelist named Robert Prentiss asked if I found Paris amusing. "For God's sake, yes. Don't you?" "Oh, how charmingly you get angry," he said.

Brett came up to the bar. "Hello, you chaps." She stood holding a brandy and soda, and I saw Cohn looking at her the way his compatriot must have looked when he saw the promised land. Brett was damned good-looking---slipover jersey, tweed skirt, hair brushed back like a boy's. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht.

Cohn asked her to dance. "I've promised to dance this with Jacob," she said. Dancing, I looked over her shoulder and saw Cohn at the bar, still watching her. "You've made a new one there," I said. "Don't talk about it. Poor chap."

"Let's get out of here," Brett said. I left fifty francs in an envelope for Georgette and we went out into the street. We got a drink at the pub next door and sent for a taxi. I told the driver the Parc Montsouris. Brett leaned back in the corner. "Oh, darling, I've been so miserable."

Chapter 4

The taxi climbed the hill past St. Etienne du Mont, down the cobbles of the Rue Mouffetard with its lighted bars, out onto the Avenue des Gobelins where men worked on car-tracks by acetylene flares. Brett's face was white in the bright light. I kissed her. Then she turned away and pressed against the corner of the seat.

"Don't touch me. Please don't touch me."

"Don't you love me?"

"Love you? I simply turn all to jelly when you touch me."

"Isn't there anything we can do about it?"

"And there's not a damn thing we could do," I said.

"We'd better keep away from each other."

She had been looking into my eyes the whole time. "When I think of the hell I've put chaps through. I'm paying for it all now."

"Don't talk like a fool," I said. "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it."

"Oh, no. I'll lay you don't."

We talked around it a while. She'd laughed about it once herself---a friend of her brother's came home that way from Mons. Chaps never know anything, do they?

"It's funny," I said. "It's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love."

"I think it's hell on earth," she said.

We sat like two strangers. The Parc Montsouris was dark. "Where do you want to go?" "Oh, go to the Select." At the Select the whole crowd from the dance was there. A little Greek portrait-painter called Zizi introduced Brett to Count Mippipopolous, who wore an elk's tooth on his watch-chain and owned a chain of sweetshops in the States. Braddocks told me Georgette had got in a frightful row---showed her yellow card and demanded the patronne's daughter's too. I said good night. The count was buying champagne.

"Try and be there," I said to Brett about meeting at the Crillon at five. "Don't worry. I've never let you down, have I?"

I walked home past the Rotonde and the Dome, past Ney's statue among the new-leaved chestnuts. In my flat I looked at my mail---a bank statement showing $2432.60 and a wedding announcement from people I didn't know. I undressed and looked at myself in the mirror. Of all the ways to be wounded. I got into bed and read the bull-fight papers and blew out the lamp.

My head started to work. The old grievance. In the Italian hospital the liaison colonel had made that wonderful speech: "You, a foreigner, an Englishman, have given more than your life." I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people. I probably never would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Brett when they shipped me to England. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Not to think about it. Try and take it sometime.

I started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. After a while it was better and I went to sleep.

I woke to a row outside. Brett's voice. The concierge was furious---"a species of woman who's waked the whole street up." Brett came upstairs, quite drunk. "Had no idea what hour it was." Half-past four. She'd just left the count. He'd offered her ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz. "Told him I couldn't do it. He was awfully nice about it." She'd told him she was in love with me. True, too. He wanted to drive us out to dinner tomorrow night.

"I have to work in the morning," I said. We kissed good night. "You don't have to go." "Yes." I watched from the window as she walked up the street and got into the big limousine under the arc-light. Then of course I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Chapter 5

In the morning I walked down the Boulevard for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnuts in the Luxembourg were in bloom. I rode the S bus to the Madeleine, standing on the back platform, and walked to my office past the man with the jumping frogs and the man with the boxer toys. At the Quai d'Orsay a young diplomat in horn-rimmed spectacles answered questions for half an hour. There was no news.

I shared a taxi back with Woolsey and Krum. "What do you do nights, Jake?" Krum asked. "I never see you around." He was going to get a car next year, live out in the country. I banged on the glass at my street and went up to the office.

Robert Cohn was waiting. We went to Wetzel's for lunch---hors d'œuvres and cold beer. His second book wasn't going. He couldn't start off for South America because of Frances.

"What do you know about Lady Brett Ashley, Jake?"

"She's a nice girl. She's getting a divorce and she's going to marry Mike Campbell."

"She's a remarkably attractive woman. I shouldn't wonder if I were in love with her."

"She's a drunk," I said. "She's in love with Mike Campbell, and she's going to marry him."

He stood up from the table, face white. "You've got to take that back." "Oh, cut out the prep-school stuff." He sat down again, glad to sit down. "You're really about the best friend I have, Jake." God help you, I thought. We had coffee at the Café de la Paix and I held him off from bringing up Brett again.

Chapter 6

At five I was at the Crillon waiting for Brett. She didn't turn up. I had a Jack Rose at the bar and took a taxi to the Select. The Boulevard Raspail always made dull riding. No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask for from the right bank, they always take you to the Rotonde.

At the Select, Harvey Stone sat outside with a pile of saucers. He hadn't eaten in five days---his money hadn't come. I gave him a hundred francs. We had a drink and talked about Mencken. "He's written about all the things he knows," Harvey said, "and now he's on all the things he doesn't know."

Cohn came up. Harvey called him a moron to his face. "What would you rather do if you could do anything?" "I think I'd rather play football again with what I know about handling myself, now." "You're not a moron," Harvey said. "You're only a case of arrested development." Cohn said some day somebody would push Harvey's face in. "They won't, though," Harvey said. "Because it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm not a fighter." He went off to eat.

"He always gets me sore," Cohn said. His writing wasn't going. The healthy conceit he'd had in the spring was gone. I have not shown Robert Cohn clearly. Until he fell in love with Brett, nothing he said ever stood out. He was nice to watch on the tennis-court, he had a good body, he handled his cards well at bridge, and he had a funny sort of undergraduate quality about him. When he fell in love with Brett his tennis game went all to pieces. People beat him who had never had a chance with him.

Frances Clyne came across the street. She wanted to talk to me alone. At the Dome she told me Cohn wanted to leave her. He'd told everyone they'd marry, she'd told her mother, and now he wouldn't do it. "I've wasted two years and a half on him. Two years ago I could have married anybody I wanted, down at Cannes." She wanted children. She'd always thought she'd have them. "He wants to go back to New York alone, and be there when his book comes out so when a lot of little chickens like it. That's what he wants."

We went back to the Select. Frances turned on Cohn with a bright, terrible smile. She told him---and me---everything: how he'd sent away his little secretary from the magazine just to please her, and now he was sending Frances to England with two hundred pounds. "You were only going to give me a hundred pounds, weren't you, Robert? But I made him give me two hundred. He's really very generous." She went on and on, bright and merciless. "Robert's always wanted to have a mistress, and if he doesn't marry me, why, then he's had one. She was his mistress for over two years." Cohn sat there, face white, taking it all. I do not know how people could say such terrible things to Robert Cohn. There are people to whom you could not say insulting things. But here was Cohn taking it all. I couldn't watch any more. I went out the side door and took a taxi home.

Chapter 7

The concierge had letters and a telegram. A lady had been here with a gentleman---very large. The concierge had changed her opinion of Brett from the night before. "She is très, très gentille. She is of very good family. It is a thing you can see." The concierge had once owned a drink-selling concession at the Paris race-courses. She took great pride in telling me which of my guests were well brought up, of good family, or sportsmen. People who fell into none of those categories were liable to be told there was no one home.

The telegram was from Bill Gorton, arriving on the France. I showered, and the doorbell rang. Brett and the count, who was holding a great bunch of roses. "I don't know whether you like flowers, sir," the count said, "but I took the liberty of just bringing these roses." Brett put them in a big earthenware jug on the dining-room table.

Brett had given the concierge two hundred francs---the count's money. I dressed slowly, feeling rotten. Brett came in and sat on the bed. "What's the matter, darling? Do you feel rocky?" She kissed me on the forehead. "Oh, Brett, I love you so much." "Do you want me to send him away?" "No. He's nice." But she sent him for champagne anyway. He loved to go for champagne.

I lay face down on the bed, having a bad time. Brett stroked my head. "Couldn't we live together, Brett?"

"I don't think so. I'd just tromper you with everybody. You couldn't stand it."

"I stand it now."

"That would be different. It's my fault, Jake. It's the way I'm made."

"Couldn't we go off in the country for a while?"

"It wouldn't be any good. I couldn't live quietly in the country. Not with my own true love."

"Isn't it rotten? There isn't any use my telling you I love you."

"Let's not talk. Talking's all bilge. I'm going away from you, and then Michael's coming back." She was going to San Sebastian. Tomorrow. We couldn't go together---not after we'd just talked it out. "Oh, sure," I said. "I know you're right. I'm just low, and when I'm low I talk like a fool."

The count came back with a basket of champagne. It was amazing champagne. "I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something." The count said you oughtn't to mix emotions with a wine like that---you lose the taste. He told us he'd been in seven wars and four revolutions, and showed us arrow wounds from Abyssinia---two raised white welts below his ribs, the same two scars on his back. Clean through. "You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well. You must get to know the values." "Doesn't anything ever happen to your values?" Brett asked. "No. Not any more."

We drank three bottles and dined in the Bois---a good dinner, a good party. "Why don't you get married, you two?" the count asked. "We want to lead our own lives," I said. "We have our careers," Brett said. The count ordered 1811 brandy. "I get more value for my money in old brandy than in any other antiquities."

We went up to Zelli's in Montmartre. Brett and I danced, tight in the crowd. "I'm going to marry him," Brett said of Michael. "Funny. I haven't thought about him for a week." Then later, dancing again: "Oh, darling, I'm so miserable." I had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. "Let's go," Brett said.

The count stayed. We took his car. At her hotel Brett said, "No, don't come up." We kissed at the door. "Oh, don't!" she said, and turned quickly and went inside. The chauffeur drove me home. I went upstairs and went to bed.

Book II

Chapter 8

I did not see Brett again until she came back from San Sebastian. One card came: "Darling. Very quiet and healthy. Love to all the chaps. BRETT." Cohn had gone to the country. Frances had left for England.

Brett was gone, I was not bothered by Cohn's troubles, there was plenty of work to do, I went often to the races. Bill Gorton arrived, cheerful and flush from his last book. He put up at the flat a couple of days and went off to Vienna. He was coming back in three weeks and we would leave for Spain---fishing and the fiesta at Pamplona. Cards came: Vienna was wonderful, then Budapest was wonderful. Then a wire: "Back on Monday."

He turned up at the flat Monday evening. "Budapest is absolutely wonderful." "How about Vienna?" "Not so good, Jake. It seemed better than it was." "How do you mean?" "Tight, Jake. I was tight." Bill told me about Vienna---four days tight. He'd seen a prize-fight where a black boxer knocked the local boy down and the crowd threw chairs. Bill loaned the fighter clothes and tried to get his money back from the promoter. The promoter claimed the fighter had promised to let the local boy stay. "Injustice everywhere." The fighter went back to Cologne---married, with a family.

We went down the Boulevard St. Michel for dinner. Bill wanted to buy a stuffed dog from a taxidermist's. "Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog." "We'll get one on the way back." "Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."

A taxi pulled up---Brett was in it. "I say I'm just back. Haven't bathed even. Michael comes in to-night." We went to the Closerie des Lilas for a drink. "I was a fool to go away," Brett said. "One's an ass to leave Paris." She and Bill got on well. "You've a nice friend, Jake." "He's all right. He's a taxidermist." "That was in another country," Bill said. "And besides all the animals were dead." Brett took a taxi to bathe. We were to meet at the Select at ten.

We ate at Madame Lecomte's on the Ile Saint Louis---roast chicken, green beans, salad, apple-pie. The place was crowded with Americans; someone had put it in the Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant untouched by Americans, so we waited forty-five minutes for a table. Afterward we walked along the island under the trees. Across the river were broken walls of old houses being torn down. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed by the wooden foot-bridge and leaned on the rail looking up at the lights of the big bridges. Below, the water was smooth and black. "It's pretty grand," Bill said. "God, I love to get back."

We walked up the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine to the Place Contrescarpe, past the Negre Joyeux with music coming out the door, past the Café Aux Amateurs where working people were drinking, then through narrow streets with high old houses to the Boulevard du Port Royal and on to the Select.

Michael Campbell came toward us, tanned and healthy-looking. "Hel-lo, Jake. How are you, old lad?" He was a little tight---amazing, he said, since he'd done nothing but walk all day with one drink at tea with his mother. Brett was sitting at the bar on a high stool, legs crossed, no stockings. Mike had a patch of dried blood on his nose from an old lady's bags falling on him. "I say, she is a piece. You are a lovely lady, Brett. Where did you get that hat?" "Chap bought it for me." "It's a dreadful hat. Do get a good hat."

Brett introduced Bill. "This drunkard is Mike Campbell. Mr. Campbell is an undischarged bankrupt." Mike kept saying Brett was a lovely piece. Bill mentioned a fight that night---Ledoux. "I can't go," Mike said. "I had a date with this thing here." "Go on to the fight," Brett said. "Mr. Campbell's getting difficult."

Bill and I went to the Ledoux-Kid Francis fight. It was a good fight.

Chapter 9

Bill was out at Chantilly. I wrote Cohn we'd leave on the 25th and meet him at Bayonne. That evening I stopped in at the Dingo. Mike and Brett were at the bar.

"Hello, darling." Brett put out her hand.

Mike asked if they could come down to Spain with us. "You wouldn't mind, really? I've been at Pamplona, you know. Brett's mad to go." I told him not to talk like a fool. They'd come down the night of the 25th. Mike would send for fishing tackle. "Won't it be splendid," Brett said. "Spain! We will have fun."

Walking Brett to her hotel, she told me something. "Is Robert Cohn going on this trip?" "Yes. Why?" "Don't you think it will be a bit rough on him?" "Why should it?" "Who did you think I went down to San Sebastian with?"

"Congratulations," I said. We walked along. "He behaved rather well, too. He gets a little dull." "You might take up social service." "Don't be nasty."

She said she'd write Cohn and give him a chance to pull out. But when I saw her on the 24th, Cohn was keen about it. "Says he can't wait to see me." "Does he think you're coming alone?" "No. I told him we were all coming down together." "He's wonderful." "Isn't he?"

Bill and I took the morning train from the Gare d'Orsay. The country was beautiful. The dining-car was cornered by seven cars of pilgrims from Dayton, Ohio, on their way from Rome to Biarritz and Lourdes. We couldn't get seats until the fifth service at three-thirty. We bought sandwiches and a bottle of Chablis and watched the country---grain ripening, fields full of poppies, green pastureland, fine trees, big rivers, and chateaux.

In our compartment was a man from Montana with his wife and son. They'd gotten into the pilgrims' dining service by accident. "It certainly shows you the power of the Catholic Church," the man said. "It's a pity you boys ain't Catholics." "I am," I said. "That's what makes me so sore."

Bill buttonholed a priest from the returning streams of pilgrims. "When do us Protestants get a chance to eat, father?" "I don't know anything about it. Haven't you got tickets?" "It's enough to make a man join the Klan," Bill said.

We passed through the Landes at sunset---wide fire-gaps cut through the pines, sandy heather country. About nine we got into Bayonne. Robert Cohn was standing with the hotel runners. He was a little near-sighted. He was shy, too. We drove to his hotel---a nice hotel, cheerful people at the desk, good small rooms.

Chapter 10

In the morning it was bright and they were sprinkling the streets. Bayonne is a nice town, like a very clean Spanish town on a big river. We bought a rod for Bill at a tackle store above a drygoods shop, looked at the cathedral---nice and dim, like Spanish churches---and found the bus to Pamplona didn't start until July 1st. We hired a car for four hundred francs.

We had a beer at a café on the square. It was hot, but the town had a cool, fresh, early-morning smell and you could feel the air came from the sea. I did not want to leave the café. But we had to get our bags.

We started off in a big closed car with the top down, up through green rolling country, the road climbing all the time. We passed Basques with oxen hauling carts, nice white-plastered farmhouses, villages with pelota courts where kids played in the hot sun.

We crossed the Spanish frontier at a little stream with carabineers in patent-leather Bonaparte hats on one side and fat Frenchmen in kepis on the other. An old man in gunny-sacking clothes came striding up with a kid slung on his back. The carabineer waved him away---no passport. "What will he do?" "Oh, he'll just wade across the stream."

We climbed into Spain proper---long brown mountains, forests of beech, then down through oak forest with white cattle grazing, across grassy plains and clear streams. The road went white and straight across a wide plain, and off on the left was a hill with an old castle. Then we could see the plateau of Pamplona rising out of the plain, the walls of the city, the great brown cathedral, and mountains every way you looked.

We came into Pamplona and stopped at the Hotel Montoya. Montoya was glad to see us and gave us good rooms looking out on the square. We had a very good lunch downstairs---hors d'œuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, dessert and fruit. You have to drink plenty of wine to get it all down. Cohn had been nervous since Bayonne. He did not know whether we knew Brett had been with him at San Sebastian.

"Brett and Mike ought to get in to-night," I said. "I rather think they're not coming," Cohn said, with an air of superior knowledge that irritated both of us. Bill bet him a hundred pesetas they'd come. We went to the Café Iruña for coffee.

I walked through the town and went into the cathedral. It was dim and dark and smelt of incense. I knelt and prayed for everybody I thought of---Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters. While praying I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed the bull-fights would be good and the fiesta fine and that we'd get some fishing. Then I started thinking about making money, which reminded me of the count, and I was a little ashamed, and regretted I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, and anyway it was a grand religion.

At dinner Cohn had had a bath, shave, haircut, shampoo, and something put on his hair to make it stay down. He was nervous. The train came in at nine. Brett and Mike were not on it. "I knew they wouldn't come," Robert said. A telegram came from them: "Stopped night San Sebastian." I put it in my pocket and told Cohn they sent their regards. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. I certainly did hate him.

We decided Bill and I would take the noon bus to Burguete for fishing. Cohn said he wasn't going---he was afraid there was some misunderstanding, that Brett expected to meet him at San Sebastian. "I wrote suggesting it to Brett." Bill and I would go ahead; Cohn would bring them up when they arrived.

Bill, shaving, told me Cohn had confided everything the night before. "He's a great little confider." Bill looked at his face in the glass. "As for this Robert Cohn, he makes me sick, and I'm damn glad he's staying here so we won't have him fishing with us."

Chapter 11

It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch to catch the bus to Burguete. People were on top of the bus and others climbing up a ladder. Cohn stood in the shade of the arcade to see us off. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag lay across the top in front of our seat. He offered us wine and imitated a klaxon horn so well I spilled some, and everybody laughed. The Basques were swell people. We shared our bottles and they shared their wine-skins.

The bus started and Cohn waved good-by. Out on the road it was cool, riding high up under the trees, the dust powdering the leaves, and we had a fine view back of the town rising above the river.

The road climbed through barren country, rocky clay with no grass. We stopped at a posada in a sudden green valley where a stream went through the town. Bill and I had aguardiente in a cool, dark room hung with saddles and hams and white garlics. Our Basques bought us drinks and we bought them drinks and then we all climbed back on top.

An old man leaned over. "You're Americans?" He'd been in California forty years ago, come back to get married. His wife didn't like to travel. He named the cities carefully---Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City. Fifteen years over there. "I hope you catch something," he said, and shook hands.

The bus ground higher. The road came over the crest into a forest of cork oaks with cattle grazing in the patches of sun. Then out ahead was a rolling green plain with dark wooded mountains beyond, clouds coming down from them. We saw the red roofs and white houses of Burguete, and away off on the shoulder of the first dark mountain the gray metal-sheathed roof of the monastery of Roncesvalles.

"It's cold up here," Bill said. "It must be twelve hundred metres."

We got down at Burguete. A carabineer checked our fishing permits. We went up the street to the inn. The fat woman who ran it shook hands with us. The room had two beds, a washstand, and a big engraving of Nuestra Señora de Roncesvalles. The wind was blowing against the shutters. It was so cold you could see your breath.

Twelve pesetas for room and board, wine included. We were the only people in the inn. Bill played the upright piano to keep warm. I got the woman to make rum punch. We had fried trout for supper, some sort of stew, and a big bowl of wild strawberries. We did not lose money on the wine. After supper we went upstairs and smoked and read in bed to keep warm.

Chapter 12

When I woke the mountains were clear, no clouds. I dressed quietly and went out to dig worms for bait in the damp ground by the stream. The goats watched me dig. I filled two tobacco-tins with worms.

Bill was awake when I got back. "Didn't want to interrupt you. What were you doing? Burying your money?" "Come on, get up." "What? Get up? I never get up." "I'm going down and eat." "Eat? Why didn't you say eat? Now you're reasonable."

We packed lunch and wine in the rucksack and walked across meadows and fields toward the woods. The path crossed streams on foot-logs. We went into a beech wood---big old trees, well spaced as though it were a park, smooth green grass, sunlight coming through the leaves in light patches. "This is country," Bill said.

The road climbed to the top of the range. There were wild strawberries on the sunny side. Ahead we could see great fields of yellow gorse and the steep bluffs, dark with trees and jutting with gray stone, that marked the course of the Irati River. It was a long walk and we were tired when we came down into the valley of the Rio de la Fabrica.

We jointed up the rods by a dam that crossed the river. Bill went downstream with flies; I fished bait in the white water below the dam. Trout shot up out of the falls in lovely arcs. I didn't feel the first one strike, but I brought him fighting and bending the rod almost double out of the boiling water, and swung him up onto the dam. In a little while I had six, all about the same size, beautifully colored and firm and hard from the cold water. I slit them and packed them in layers of ferns and sat under a tree to read until lunch.

Bill came up sweating and happy with four big trout. We got the wine from the spring where I'd put it to cool---so cold my hand went numb. It was icy and tasted faintly rusty. "That's not such filthy wine," Bill said. We spread lunch on a newspaper---chicken, hard-boiled eggs.

"First the egg," Bill said. "Then the chicken. Even Bryan could see that."

"He's dead. I read it in the paper yesterday."

"Gentlemen," Bill said, unwrapping a drumstick. "I reverse the order. For Bryan's sake. As a tribute to the Great Commoner." He launched into a long riff on irony and pity, expatriates, the Anti-Saloon League, Mencken. "You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You hang around cafés." "It sounds like a swell life," I said. "When do I work?"

"You don't work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you're impotent."

"No," I said. "I just had an accident."

"Never mention that," Bill said. "That's the sort of thing that can't be spoken of." He stopped. I was afraid he thought he had hurt me. "Let's lay off that," he said.

"You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot."

We drank both bottles of wine and lay with our heads in the shade looking up into the trees.

"Say, what about this Brett business? Were you ever in love with her?"

"Sure."

"For how long?"

"Off and on for a hell of a long time."

"Oh, hell! I'm sorry, fella."

"It's all right. I don't give a damn any more." "Really?" "Really. Only I'd a hell of a lot rather not talk about it."

"Listen, Jake, are you really a Catholic?"

"Technically."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

We slept, then packed up and walked the long road home to Burguete in the dark.

We stayed five days and had good fishing. The nights were cold and the days were hot, and there was always a breeze even in the heat of the day. We found a stream with a pool deep enough to swim in. In the evenings we played three-handed bridge with an Englishman named Harris who had walked over from Saint Jean Pied de Port. He was very pleasant and went with us twice to the Irati River. There was no word from Cohn or from Brett and Mike.

Chapter 13

Bill and I took the afternoon bus back to Pamplona. Harris gave us each an envelope of flies he'd tied himself. "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 and Harris stood in front of the post-office and waved. "Say, wasn't that Harris nice?" Bill said.

At the Montoya, Montoya told us our friends were here---Mr. Campbell, Mr. Cohn, and Lady Ashley. He smiled as though there were something I would hear about. The bulls were coming in tonight---the Villar bulls, and tomorrow the Miuras.

Montoya always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us. Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya's hotel. Those with aficion came each year. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once and did not come back. We often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. When other aficionados saw that I, an American, had aficion---and there was no password, no set questions, rather a sort of oral spiritual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive---there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a "Buen hombre." It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain. Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful between us.

Brett and Mike and Cohn were at the Café Iruña. Brett was wearing a Basque beret. She was happy. "Where the hell have you been?" "Did you get good fishing?" Mike asked. We told them about Harris and the Irati.

Mike told the story of his medals---he'd never sent in for them, had his tailor make up some miniatures for a dinner with the Prince of Wales, then the Prince didn't come, and Mike gave the medals away to girls in a night club. The tailor wrote for months wanting them back---some chap had left them to be cleaned. "Rotten luck for the tailor," Mike said. "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

We went down to see the bulls unloaded. Women stared at Brett as we passed. At the corrals we climbed up on the stone walls and looked down. Beyond the river rose the plateau of the town, all along the old walls and ramparts people were standing, three black lines of people.

A mule dragged a cage against the gate. Someone rapped on the cage with an iron bar. Inside something seemed to explode. Then the bull charged out into the corral, skidding in the straw, his head up, the great hump of muscle on his neck swollen tight, his body muscles quivering as he looked up at the crowd. The steers backed away. The bull saw them and charged.

"My God, isn't he beautiful?" Brett said.

"Look how he knows how to use his horns. He's got a left and a right just like a boxer."

A second bull came out and drove into one of the steers. "Don't look," I said to Brett. She was watching, fascinated. "I saw it," she said. "I saw him shift from his left to his right horn." When the last bulls were unloaded the herd stood together, heads down, quiet. The steer who had been gored stood alone against the wall.

At the café afterward, Mike started in on Cohn. "It's no life being a steer," Cohn had said. "I should think you'd love it," Mike said. "You'd never have to say a word. Is Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?" Brett told him to shut up. "Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? What if Brett did sleep with you? She's slept with lots of better people than you."

Cohn stood up. "Shut up, Mike." But Mike went on. "Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren't wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer." Bill took Cohn away. Brett looked disgusted.

"I'm not saying he's not right, you know," Brett said to me. "He did behave very badly." Mike said Cohn called Brett Circe---claimed she turned men into swine. "He'd be good, you know," Brett said. "He writes a good letter."

"Don't spoil the fiesta," Brett told Mike. "He's here. He'll behave. I'll tell him."

Supper was pleasant, though. Brett wore a black sleeveless evening dress and looked quite beautiful. Mike acted as though nothing had happened. Cohn was reserved and formal, but he cheered up finally. He could not stop looking at Brett. It seemed to make him happy. Bill was very funny. So was Michael. It was like certain dinners I remember from the war---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.

Chapter 14

I was quite drunk. I read Turgenieff in bed to keep the room from going round. I heard Brett and Cohn come up the stairs. Cohn said good night outside the door. Brett went in to Mike. They talked and laughed. 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!

To hell with women, anyway. I had been having Brett for a friend, getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. I thought I had paid for everything. Just exchange of values. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth. In five years it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had. All I wanted to know was how to live in it.

I wished Mike would not behave so terribly to Cohn. I liked to see him hurt Cohn, and I wished he would not do it, because afterward it made me disgusted at myself. That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality.

The next two days in Pamplona were quiet. The town was getting ready for the fiesta. Workmen put up gate-posts for the running of the bulls. Out on the plateau they exercised picador horses. We sat in the white wicker chairs at the Iruña. It was a quiet life and no one was drunk. I went to church a couple of times, once with Brett. Cohn followed us, though he was pleasant about it. We walked out to the gypsy camp and Brett had her fortune told. It was a good morning, fresh and cool on the plateau. I felt quite friendly to Cohn. That was the last day before the fiesta.

Chapter 15

At noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it. The rocket went up in the square and the ball of smoke hung in the sky like a shrapnel burst, and by the time the second rocket burst there were so many people in the arcade that the waiter could hardly get through to our table. Down the street came the pipes and fifes and drums, and behind them the men and boys dancing. When the fifers stopped they all crouched down, and when the music shrilled again they all went up in the air dancing. In the crowd you saw only the heads and shoulders going up and down.

The fiesta kept up day and night for seven days. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences.

That afternoon was the big religious procession. Brett was stopped at the chapel door because she had no hat. Dancers formed a circle around her in the street---they wanted her as an image to dance around. They rushed us into a wine-shop. Brett was seated on a wine-cask. It was dark and full of men singing, hard-voiced singing. They hung a wreath of garlics around her neck. I went out and bought two leather wine-bottles---one two litres, one five. The man in the shop blew up the big one, his cheeks puffing ahead of the wine-skin, and stood on it to show it didn't leak. In the back room Mike was eating tuna fish with some Spaniards. Cohn had passed out on Anis del Mono and was sleeping on wine-casks in a back room with a wreath of garlics around his neck.

Two hours later Cohn appeared, still garlanded. "I must have been sleeping." "Oh, not at all," Brett said. "You were only dead," Bill said.

Going down the dark streets to the hotel we saw sky-rockets in the square and the square solid with people dancing. It was a big meal at the hotel---the first at doubled fiesta prices. I resolved to stay up for the bulls at six in the morning but went to bed around four. I woke to the rocket announcing the release of the bulls. From Cohn's balcony I watched the crowd come running down the narrow street, packed close together, and behind them the bulls galloping, tossing their heads. It all went out of sight around the corner. A great roar came from the bull-ring.

No one was up before noon. After lunch the café filled with the close, crowded hum that came every day before the bull-fight. The café did not make this same noise at any other time.

I had taken six seats for all the fights---three barreras at the ring-side, three sobrepuertos halfway up. Mike thought Brett had best sit high up for her first time. "I'm not worried about how I'll stand it. I'm only afraid I may be bored," Cohn said.

We went up to meet Pedro Romero in his room. He stood very straight and unsmiling in his bull-fighting clothes. His black hair shone under the electric light. He was the best-looking boy I have ever seen. He was nineteen years old, alone except for his sword-handler and three hangers-on. We wished him luck and went out.

It was a good bull-fight. Romero was the real thing. There had not been a real one for a long time. After his first bull Montoya caught my eye and nodded. We had that disturbed emotional feeling that always comes after a bull-fight, and the elation that comes after a good one.

"What do you suppose that dance is?" Bill asked at the café afterward. Brett and Mike and Cohn came over. "That Romero what'shisname is somebody," Mike said. "Oh, isn't he lovely," Brett said. "And those green trousers." "Brett never took her eyes off them." Cohn had been quite green during the first horse, Mike said. "You weren't bored, were you?" Bill asked. Cohn laughed. "No. I wasn't bored. I wish you'd forgive me that."

The second day was much better. Brett sat at the barrera and I explained what it was all about---how to watch the bull, not the horse, how Romero took the bull away from a fallen horse, how he held him with the cape and turned him smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. She saw why she liked Romero's cape-work. He never made any contortions, always straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews to give a faked look of danger. Romero had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable.

"I've never seen him do an awkward thing," Brett said.

"I believe, you know, that she's falling in love with this bull-fighter chap," Mike said.

"Be a good chap, Jake. Tell her how they beat their old mothers."

The next day Romero did not fight. It was Miura bulls and a very bad bull-fight. Then a day with no bull-fight scheduled. But all day and all night the fiesta kept on.

Chapter 16

In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea. The flags hung wet, the streets were dark and deserted, yet the fiesta kept up without any pause, only driven under cover. Dancers came into the cafés, shaking water from their belled caps, spreading their red and purple jackets over chairs to dry.

Montoya came to my room while I was shaving. He smiled his embarrassed smile. He had a message from the American ambassador's party at the Grand Hotel---they wanted Pedro Romero to come for coffee. "Don't give Romero the message," I said. Montoya was very pleased. "People take a boy like that. They don't know what he's worth. Any foreigner can flatter him. They start this Grand Hotel business, and in one year they're through."

At dinner Pedro Romero was at the next table with a Madrid bull-fight critic. I went over and we talked. He was born in Ronda, had learned a little English in Gibraltar, started bull-fighting in Malaga three years ago. He talked of his work as something altogether apart from himself. There was nothing conceited about him. "I like it very much that you like my work," he said. "But you haven't seen it yet. To-morrow, if I get a good bull, I will try and show it to you."

Brett called from our table. "You have deserted us." "Tell him bulls have no balls!" Mike shouted. He was drunk. I introduced Romero to everyone. We all moved to a big table for coffee and Fundador. Romero sat beside Brett, listening to her. Mike was shouting obscenities. Montoya came in, saw Romero with a big glass of cognac, sitting laughing between me and a woman with bare shoulders at a table full of drunks. He did not even nod.

We toasted Pedro Romero. He shook hands with everyone and left with the critic. "My God! he's a lovely boy," Brett said.

Mike turned on Cohn again. "Do you think Brett wants you here? Go away. Go away, for God's sake. Take that sad Jewish face away." Cohn stood up and took off his glasses, waiting for the assault. I grabbed Mike and steered him outside.

Brett came out with Bill. In the square Don Manuel Orquito, the fireworks king, was trying to launch fire balloons, but the wind brought them all down into the crowd. We went to the Bar Milano. Mike and Bill went off to "festa the English" from Biarritz.

Brett and I were alone. Cohn had been sent away. "I'm so sick of him," Brett said. "He can't believe it didn't mean anything."

"Everybody behaves badly," I said. "Give them the proper chance."

"You wouldn't behave badly." Brett looked at me.

"I'd be as big an ass as Cohn."

We walked out to the fortifications at the edge of town and sat on the stone wall. Across the plain it was dark and we could see the mountains. The wind took the clouds across the moon. Below were the dark pits of the fortifications. Behind, the shadow of the cathedral and the town silhouetted against the moon.

"Do you still love me, Jake?"

"Yes."

"Because I'm a goner. I'm mad about the Romero boy. I'm in love with him, I think."

"I wouldn't be if I were you."

"I can't help it. I've never been able to help anything." Her hand was trembling. "I'm like that all through." She said she'd got to do something she really wanted to do. She'd lost her self-respect.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Come on. Let's go and find him."

Pedro Romero was in the café with other bull-fighters. He came over to our table. He was being very careful. I think he was sure of what was between them, but he did not want to make any mistake. He had very nice manners. His skin was clear and smooth and very brown. There was a triangular scar on his cheek-bone. Brett read his palm. "There are thousands of bulls," she said. "I'm never going to die," Romero said.

I stood up. Romero rose too. "Sit down," I said. "I must go and find our friends." He looked at me. It was a final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood all right.

When I came back twenty minutes later, Brett and Pedro Romero were gone.

Chapter 17

Bill and Mike had been thrown out of the Bar Milano by the police---some people from Biarritz who knew Mike and didn't like him. Edna, Bill's friend, had kept them out of four fights. We went to the Café Suizo. In front of the ticket-booths people were sitting on chairs or crouched on the ground with blankets, waiting for the wickets to open in the morning.

Cohn came up, his face sallow. "Where's Brett?" "I don't know." "She was with you." "She must have gone to bed." "She's not." "I don't know where she is." "Tell me where she is." "The hell you don't!" Cohn said. "Brett's gone off with the bull-fighter chap," Mike called from the table. "They're on their honeymoon."

"I'll make you tell me"---Cohn stepped forward---"you damned pimp."

I swung at him and he ducked. He hit me and I sat down on the pavement. He hit me twice more. I went down backward under a table. Mike helped me up. Someone poured a carafe of water on my head. He'd knocked Mike down too. "He must be a boxer," Edna said.

Walking across the square to the hotel, everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. My feet seemed a long way off, and everything seemed to come from a long way off. It was like coming home after being kicked in the head in a football game. Going up the stairs took a long time, and I had the feeling I was carrying my suitcase.

Bill told me to go up and see Cohn. I climbed the stairs carrying my phantom suitcase. Cohn was lying face down on the bed in the dark, crying. He had on a white polo shirt, the kind he'd worn at Princeton. "I'm sorry, Jake. Please forgive me." "Forgive you, hell." "I couldn't stand it about Brett." "You called me a pimp." I did not care. I wanted a hot bath. "I'm going away in the morning," he said. He was crying without making any noise. "You were the only friend I had, and I loved Brett so." We shook hands in the dark.

I could not find the bathroom. When I found it the water would not run. I sat on the edge of the tub. When I got up I found I had taken off my shoes. I carried them downstairs, found my room, and got into bed.

I woke with a headache and the noise of bands. At the encierro I watched through the fence as the crowd came running and the bulls galloped behind them. One bull shot ahead, caught a man in the back, lifted him in the air, and dropped him. The man lay face down in the trampled mud. The red door of the ring went shut.

At the café the waiter told me: "Muerto. Dead. With a horn through him. All for morning fun." He put his hand on the small of his back. "A cornada right through the back. For fun---you understand." The man was named Vicente Girones, twenty-eight years old, from near Tafalla. He had a farm, a wife, and two children. The coffin was carried to the railway station by members of the dancing and drinking society of Tafalla. The drums marched ahead, and there was music on the fifes, and behind the men who carried the coffin walked the wife and children. The widow and two children rode in an open third-class carriage.

The bull who killed Vicente Girones was named Bocanegra, Number 118, and was killed by Pedro Romero that same afternoon. His ear was cut by popular acclamation and given to Romero, who gave it to Brett, who wrapped it in a handkerchief of mine and left both ear and handkerchief shoved far back in the drawer of her bed-table at the Hotel Montoya.

Back at the hotel, Bill and Mike told me what had happened. Cohn had gone to Romero's room and found Brett there. He massacred the poor bull-fighter---knocked him down about fifteen times. But Romero kept getting up. Cohn couldn't knock him out. Finally Cohn said he wouldn't hit him again, said it would be wicked. So Romero staggered over and hit Cohn as hard as he could in the face, then sat down on the floor. He told Cohn if he helped him he'd kill him, and he'd kill him anyway in the morning if Cohn wasn't out of town. Cohn was crying and wanting to shake hands. Brett told him not to be a ruddy ass. Then Cohn leaned down to shake hands with the bull-fighter---no hard feelings, all for forgiveness---and Romero hit him in the face again.

"That's quite a kid," Bill said.

"He ruined Cohn," Mike said. "I don't think Cohn will ever want to knock people about again."

Mike was rather drunk. "Brett's rather cut up. But she loves looking after people. That's how we came to go off together. She was looking after me." He told me Brett's husband Ashley, the ninth baronet, was a sailor who wouldn't sleep in a bed when he came home. He used to tell Brett he'd kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver. Brett used to take the shells out when he'd gone to sleep. "She hasn't had an absolutely happy life, Brett. Damned shame, too. She enjoys things so."

Chapter 18

At noon we were all at the café eating shrimps and drinking beer. It was the last day of the fiesta. Big motor-cars from Biarritz and San Sebastian kept driving up. Brett came through the crowd, walking with her head up as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor. "I say, I have a thirst." Her hand shook when she lifted the glass. Cohn was gone---he'd hired a car.

Brett said Romero was hurt most badly but he would fight. "Watch him this afternoon." Mike tipped the table so all the beers and shrimps went over in a crash. "Oh, to hell with your bull-fighter!" Brett and I walked out.

"I feel altogether changed," Brett said. She was radiant. "You've no idea, Jake." She wanted to pray a little for Romero, so we went into the chapel of San Fermin. After a moment she stiffened. "Come on. Let's get out of here. Makes me damned nervous." Outside she said, "Don't know why I get so nervy in church. Never does me any good."

Mike was in bad shape at the hotel---lying on the bed like a death mask of himself. "Brett's got a bull-fighter. But her Jew has gone away."

Bill and I ate at a restaurant in a side street. Then Brett came and we went to the bull-ring together. Through the glasses I saw the three matadors---Romero in the centre, Belmonte on his left, Marcial on his right. Romero's face was badly marked. He was looking straight ahead.

Belmonte was very good but the crowd demanded more. He had come out of retirement to compete with the decadent bull-fighters, but his return had been spoiled by Romero. Romero did always, smoothly and beautifully, what Belmonte could only bring himself to do now sometimes. The crowd wanted three times as much from him as he had ever been able to give. They felt defrauded and cheated, and Belmonte's jaw came further out in contempt. They threw cushions and bread and vegetables at him. His jaw only went further out. After his second bull he passed into the callejon and leaned on the barrera, his head on his arms, going through his pain. He was sick with a fistula.

Because they were against Belmonte the public were for Romero. His sword-handler handed Brett his heavy gold-brocaded cape. Close below us we saw Romero's lips were puffed, both eyes discolored, his face swollen. He did not look up at us.

His first bull could not see well. He had to make the bull consent with his body---get so close the bull saw him, then shift the charge to the flannel. The Biarritz crowd thought he was afraid. But out in the centre of the ring, all alone, Romero went on, offering the body, drawing the charge, then giving the bull the red cloth to follow. Each thing he did with this bull wiped out the beating from Cohn a little cleaner. He killed directly below us. For an instant he and the bull were one, the sword high between the shoulders. Then the figure was broken and the bull went down on his knees.

His last bull was the one that had killed Vicente Girones that morning. It was a good bull, big, with horns, and it turned and recharged easily. All the passes he linked up, all completed, all slow, templed and smooth. There were no tricks and no mystifications. Each pass as it reached the summit gave you a sudden ache inside. The crowd did not want it ever to be finished.

He killed as he wanted to. He profiled directly in front of the bull, drew the sword out, rose on his toes, and sighted along the blade. The bull charged and Romero waited. Without taking a step forward, he became one with the bull, the sword in high between the shoulders, the bull following the low-swung flannel that disappeared as Romero lurched clear. The bull tried to go forward, his legs settled, and he went down. Handkerchiefs waved all over the ring. The brother cut the ear and Romero came toward us, leaned against the barrera, and gave the ear to Brett. He nodded and smiled. "You liked it?" Brett did not say anything. They looked at each other and smiled.

The crowd tried to carry him on their shoulders. He fought and twisted away but they held him and lifted him and ran out the gate with him.

At the café Bill and I drank absinthe. "Well, it was a swell fiesta." "Yes. Something doing all the time." "You wouldn't believe it. It's like a wonderful nightmare." I felt low as hell. Bill kept ordering absinthes. "Get tight. Get over your damn depression." I was drunker than I ever remembered having been.

At the hotel Mike told me Brett had gone off with the bull-fighter on the seven o'clock train. "She looked for you to say good-bye." I went to my room and lay on the bed. The bed went sailing off. Later Bill and Mike came to get me for dinner. I pretended to be asleep. When I finally went down, the three of us sat at the table and it seemed as though about six people were missing.

Book III

Chapter 19

In the morning it was all over. The fiesta was finished. I woke about nine o'clock, had a bath, dressed, and went downstairs. The square was empty and there were no people on the streets. A few children were picking up rocket-sticks. Waiters were carrying out the white wicker chairs. A waiter came with a bucket of water and a cloth and commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing away what stuck to the stone.

Bill came over. "It's all over." He was going back to Paris. Mike was going to Saint Jean de Luz. I would go to San Sebastian. We'd get a car to Bayonne after lunch. Montoya did not come near us. One of the maids brought the bill.

We drove out of Pamplona, over the mountains and out of Spain, through the wet green Basque country to Bayonne. Mike had a bottle of Fundador. We left Bill's bags at the station and drove to Biarritz for whiskeys. We rolled poker dice. Mike lost and kept paying. Then he said he had no money---just twenty francs. He'd had just enough to pay Montoya. Bill offered to cash a check. "That's damned nice of you, but you see I can't write checks." Brett had no money either---she'd given it all to Mike when she left. "One never gets anywhere by discussing finances," Mike said.

We drove along the coast---the green headlands, white red-roofed villas, the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. At Saint Jean de Luz we dropped Mike at his hotel. "Good-bye, you chaps. It was a damned fine fiesta." At Bayonne I saw Bill off on the train to Paris. "It was swell. I've had a swell time." "So long, old kid!" I watched the train pull out and the tracks were empty.

I paid the driver and watched the car turn off toward Spain. The rod-case seemed the last thing that connected me with the fiesta. At the hotel I ate dinner alone---a Château Margaux for company. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company. The waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra, made of the flowers of the Pyrenees. It looked like hair-oil and smelled like Italian strega. I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away and bring me a vieux marc. Everything was on such a clear financial basis in France. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I was back in France.

Next morning I took the train to San Sebastian. Even on a hot day San Sebastian has a certain early-morning quality. The trees seem as though their leaves were never quite dry. I got a room with a balcony above the roofs and a green mountainside beyond. I went down to the Concha and swam out to the raft and lay on the hot planks. The water was buoyant and cold. It felt as though you could never sink. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom where it was green and dark, the raft making a dark shadow above. I came up and swam slowly and steadily in to shore.

At the Café Marinas I sat in the fresh coolness and read and watched the people and listened to the orchestra playing inside. At supper there was a long table of bicycle-riders from the Tour du Pays Basque, all French and Belgians, burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves. The man with the lead had an attack of boils. "Listen," he said, tapping his fork on the table, "tomorrow my nose is so tight on the handle-bars that the only thing touches those boils is a lovely breeze." I had coffee with a team manager who said bicycle road-racing was the only sport in the world. Had I ever followed the Tour de France? It was the greatest sporting event in the world.

In the morning the bicycle-riders had been on the road for three hours. I had coffee in bed and then took my bathing-suit down to the beach. Everything was fresh and cool and damp. Nurses walked under the trees with children. The tide was in and there was a good surf. I swam out through the rollers, turned and floated. Floating I saw only the sky, and felt the drop and lift of the swells. I swam back and coasted in face down on a big roller, then swam out to the raft. I sat dripping on the boards and looked around at the bay, the old town, the casino, the line of trees along the promenade, and the big hotels with their white porches. Off on the right, almost closing the harbor, was a green hill with a castle.

After I was dressed I walked back to the hotel. The concierge brought me a telegram:

COULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID AM RATHER IN TROUBLE BRETT.

Well, that meant San Sebastian all shot to hell. I sent a wire: ARRIVING SUD EXPRESS TOMORROW LOVE JAKE. That seemed to handle it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love.

I did not sleep much on the Sud Express. In the morning I watched the rock and pine country between Avila and Escorial. I saw the Escorial out of the window, gray and long and cold in the sun, and did not give a damn about it. I saw Madrid come up over the plain, a compact white skyline on top of a little cliff.

The Norte station in Madrid is the end of the line. All trains finish there. They don't go on anywhere. I took a taxi and we climbed up through the gardens, by the empty palace and the unfinished church on the edge of the cliff, and on up into the high, hot, modern town.

At the Hotel Montana a fat woman with gray hair stiffly oiled in scallops around her face led me down a long dark corridor. Brett was in bed. The room was in that disorder produced only by those who have always had servants.

"Darling! I've had such a hell of a time."

"Tell me about it."

"Nothing to tell. He only left yesterday. I made him go."

"Why didn't you keep him?"

"I don't know. It isn't the sort of thing one does. I don't think I hurt him any." He'd been ashamed of her at first---they ragged him at the café. He wanted her to grow her hair out. He wanted to marry her. "So I couldn't go away from him, he said."

"You know I'd have lived with him if I hadn't seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well."

"I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children."

She looked away. Then I saw she was crying. Shaking and crying. She wouldn't look up. I put my arms around her.

"I'm going back to Mike." I could feel her crying as I held her close. "He's so damned nice and he's so awful. He's my sort of thing."

"I won't be one of those bitches," she said. "But, oh, Jake, please let's never talk about it."

We left the Hotel Montana. The woman who ran the hotel would not let me pay the bill. "Oh, well. Let it go," Brett said. "It doesn't matter now."

We rode in a taxi to the Palace Hotel and went into the bar. The barman shook Martinis in a large nickelled shaker. They were coldly beaded. Outside the curtained window was the summer heat of Madrid.

"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel," I said. "Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more."

"You know," Brett said, "it's quite true. He is only nineteen. Isn't it amazing?" He'd only been with two women before, she said. He never cared about anything but bull-fighting.

"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch."

"Yes."

"It's sort of what we have instead of God."

"Some people have God," I said. "Quite a lot."

"He never worked very well with me."

We lunched upstairs at Botin's---roast young suckling pig and rioja alta. Brett did not eat much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles. Brett put her hand on my arm. "Don't get drunk, Jake. You don't have to."

"How do you know?"

"Don't. You'll be all right."

"Want to go for a ride?" I said. "Want to ride through the town?"

We came out to the street and a waiter went for a taxi. It was hot and bright and the houses looked sharply white. Brett moved close to me. We sat close against each other. I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortably. We turned out onto the Gran Via.

"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"