The Sun Also Rises (20 page)

“You liked it?” Romero called.

Brett did not say anything. They looked at each other and smiled. Brett had the ear in her hand.

“Don't get bloody,” Romero said, and grinned. The crowd wanted him. Several boys shouted at Brett. The crowd was the boys, the dancers, and the drunks. Romero turned and tried to get through the crowd. They were all around him trying to lift him and put him on their shoulders. He fought and twisted away, and started running, in the midst of them, toward the exit. He did not want to be carried on people's shoulders. But they held him and lifted him. It was uncomfortable and his legs were spraddled and his body was very sore. They were lifting him and all running toward the gate. He had his hand on somebody's shoulder. He looked around at us apologetically. The crowd, running, went out the gate with him.

We all three went back to the hotel. Brett went upstairs. Bill and I sat in the downstairs dining room and ate some hard-boiled eggs and drank several bottles of beer. Belmonte came down in his street clothes with his manager and two other men. They sat at the next table and ate. Belmonte ate very little. They were leaving on the seven o'clock train for Barcelona. Belmonte wore a blue-striped shirt and a dark suit, and ate soft-boiled eggs. The others ate a big meal. Belmonte did not talk. He only answered questions.

Bill was tired after the bullfight. So was I. We both took a bullfight very hard. We sat and ate the eggs and I watched Belmonte and the people at his table. The men with him were tough-looking and businesslike.

“Come on over to the café,” Bill said. “I want an absinthe.”

It was the last day of the fiesta. Outside it was beginning to be cloudy again. The square was full of people and the fireworks experts were making up their set pieces for the night and covering them over with beech branches. Boys were watching. We passed stands of rockets with long bamboo stems. Outside the café there was a great crowd. The music and the dancing were going on. The giants and the dwarfs were passing.

“Where's Edna?” I asked Bill.

“I don't know.”

We watched the beginning of the evening of the last night of the fiesta. The absinthe made everything seem better. I drank it without sugar in the dripping glass, and it was pleasantly bitter.

“I feel sorry about Cohn,” Bill said. “He had an awful time.”

“Oh, to hell with Cohn,” I said.

“Where do you suppose he went?”

“Up to Paris.”

“What do you suppose he'll do?”

“Oh, to hell with him.”

“What do you suppose he'll do?”

“Pick up with his old girl, probably.”

“Who was his old girl?”

“Somebody named Frances.”

We had another absinthe.

“When do you go back?” I asked.

“Tomorrow.”

After a little while Bill said: “Well, it was a swell fiesta.”

“Yes,” I said; “something doing all the time.”

“You wouldn't believe it. It's like a wonderful nightmare.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'd believe anything. Including nightmares.”

“What's the matter? Feel low?”

“Low as hell.”

“Have another absinthe. Here, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor.”

“I feel like hell,” I said.

“Drink that,” said Bill. “Drink it slow.”

It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel like hell.”

“Have another?”

“It won't do any good.”

“Try it. You can't tell; maybe this is the one that gets it. Hey, waiter! Another absinthe for this senor!”

I poured the water directly into it and stirred it instead of letting it drip. Bill put in a lump of ice. I stirred the ice around with a spoon in the brownish, cloudy mixture.

“How is it?”

“Fine.”

“Don't drink it fast that way. It will make you sick.”

I set down the glass. I had not meant to drink it fast.

“I feel tight.”

“You ought to.”

“That's what you wanted, wasn't it?”

“Sure. Get tight. Get over your damn depression.”

“Well, I'm tight. Is that what you want?”

“Sit down.”

“I won't sit down,” I said. “I'm going over to the hotel.”

I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been. At the hotel I went upstairs. Brett's door was open. I put my head in the room. Mike was sitting on the bed. He waved a bottle.

“Jake,” he said. “Come in, Jake.”

I went in and sat down. The room was unstable unless I looked at some fixed point.

“Brett, you know. She's gone off with the bullfighter chap.”

“No.”

“Yes. She looked for you to say good-bye. They went on the seven o'clock train.”

“Did they?”

“Bad thing to do,” Mike said. “She shouldn't have done it.”

“No.”

“Have a drink? Wait while I ring for some beer.”

“I'm drunk,” I said. “I'm going in and lie down.”

“Are you blind? I was blind myself.”

“Yes,” I said, ‘‘I'm blind.”

“Well, bung-o,” Mike said. “Get some sleep, old Jake.”

I went out the door and into my own room and lay on the bed.

The bed went sailing off and I sat up in bed and looked at the wall to make it stop. Outside in the square the fiesta was going on. It did not mean anything. Later Bill and Mike came in to get me to go down and eat with them. I pretended to be asleep.

“He's asleep. Better let him alone.”

“He's blind as a tick,” Mike said. They went out.

I got up and went to the balcony and looked out at the dancing in the square. The world was not wheeling anymore. It was just very clear and bright, and inclined to blur at the edges. I washed, brushed my hair. I looked strange to myself in the glass, and went downstairs to the dining room.

“Here he is!” said Bill. “Good old Jake! I knew you wouldn't pass out.”

“Hello, you old drunk,” Mike said.

“I got hungry and woke up.”

“Eat some soup,” Bill said.

The three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing.

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 in the square. The cafés were just opening and the waiters were carrying out the comfortable white wicker chairs and arranging them around the marble-topped tables in the shade of the arcade. They were sweeping the streets and sprinkling them with a hose.

I sat in one of the wicker chairs and leaned back comfortably.

The waiter was in no hurry to come. The white paper announcements of the unloading of the bulls and the big schedules of special trains were still up on the pillars of the arcade. A waiter wearing a blue apron came out with a bucket of water and a cloth, and commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing and rubbing away the paper that stuck to the stone. The fiesta was over.

I drank a coffee and after a while Bill came over. I watched him come walking across the square. He sat down at the table and ordered a coffee.

“Well,” he said, “it's all over.”

‘‘Yes,” I said “When do you go?”

“I don't know. We better get a car, I think. Aren't you going back to Paris?”

“No. I can stay away another week. I think I'll go to San Sebastian.”

“I want to get back.”

“What's Mike going to do?”

“He's going to Saint Jean de Luz.”

“Let's get a car and all go as far as Bayonne. You can get the train up from there tonight.”

“Good. Let's go after lunch.”

“All right. I'll get the car.”

We had lunch and paid the bill. Montoya did not come near us. One of the maids brought the bill. The car was outside. The chauffeur piled and strapped the bags on top of the car and put them in beside him in the front seat and we got in. The car went out of the square, along through the side streets, out under the trees and down the hill and away from Pamplona. It did not seem like a very long ride. Mike had a bottle of Fundador. I only took a couple of drinks. We came over the mountains and out of Spain and down the white roads and through the over-foliaged, wet, green, Basque country, and finally into Bayonne. We left Bill's baggage at the station, and he bought a ticket to Paris. His train left at seven-ten. We came out of the station. The car was standing out in front.

“What shall we do about the car?” Bill asked.

“Oh, bother the car,” Mike said. “Let's just keep the car with us.”

“All right,” Bill said. “Where shall we go?”

“Let's go to Biarritz and have a drink.”

“Old Mike the spender,” Bill said.

We drove in to Biarritz and left the car outside a very Ritz place. We went into the bar and sat on high stools and drank a whiskey and soda.

“That drink's mine,” Mike said. “Let's roll for it.”

So we rolled poker dice out of a deep leather dice-cup. Bill was out first roll. Mike lost to me and handed the bartender a hundred-franc note. The whiskeys were twelve francs apiece. We had an- other round and Mike lost again. Each time he gave the bartender a good tip. In a room off the bar there was a good jazz band playing. It was a pleasant bar. We had another round. I went out on the first roll with four kings. Bill and Mike rolled. Mike won the first roll with four jacks. Bill won the second. On the final roll Mike had three kings and let them stay. He handed the dice-cup to Bill. Bill rattled them and rolled, and there were three kings, an ace, and a queen.

“It's yours, Mike,” Bill said. “Old Mike, the gambler.”

“I'm so sorry,” Mike said. “I can't get it.”

“What's the matter?”

“I've no money,” Mike said. “I'm stony. I've just twenty francs. Here, take twenty francs.”

Bill's face sort of changed.

“I just had enough to pay Montoya. Damned lucky to have it, too.”

“I'll cash you a check,” Bill said.

“That's damned nice of you, but you see I can't write checks.”

“What are you going to do for money?”

“Oh, some will come through. I've two weeks allowance should be here. I can live on tick at this pub in Saint Jean.”

“What do you want to do about the car?” Bill asked me. “Do you want to keep it on?”

“It doesn't make any difference. Seems sort of idiotic.”

“Come on, let's have another drink,” Mike said.

“Fine. This one is on me,” Bill said. “Has Brett any money?”

He turned to Mike.

“I shouldn't think so. She put up most of what I gave to old Montoya.”

“She hasn't any money with her?” I asked.

“I shouldn't think so. She never has any money. She gets five hundred quid a year and pays three hundred and fifty of it in interest to Jews.”

“I suppose they get it at the source,” said Bill.

“Quite. They're not really Jews. We just call them Jews. They're Scotsmen, I believe.”

“Hasn't she any at all with her?” I asked.

“I hardly think so. She gave it all to me when she left.”

“Well,” Bill said, “we might as well have another drink.”

“Damned good idea,” Mike said. “One never gets anywhere by discussing finances.”

“No,” said Bill. Bill and I rolled for the next two rounds. Bill lost and paid. We went out to the car.

“Anywhere you'd like to go, Mike?” Bill asked.

“Let's take a drive. It might do my credit good. Let's drive about a little.”

“Fine. I'd like to see the coast. Let's drive down toward Hendaye.”

“I haven't any credit along the coast.”

“You can't ever tell,” said Bill.

We drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona. The road went on ahead. Bill looked at his watch. It was time for us to go back. He knocked on the glass and told the driver to turn around. The driver backed the car out into the grass to turn it. In back of us were the woods, below a stretch of meadow, then the sea.

At the hotel where Mike was going to stay in Saint Jean we stopped the car and he got out. The chauffeur carried in his bags. Mike stood by the side of the car.

“Good-bye, you chaps,” Mike said. “It was a damned fine fiesta.”

“So long, Mike,” Bill said.

“I'll see you around,” I said.

“Don't worry about money,” Mike said. “You can pay for the car, Jake, and I'll send you my share.”

“So long, Mike.”

“So long, you chaps. You've been damned nice.”

We all shook hands. We waved from the car to Mike. He stood in the road watching. We got to Bayonne just before the train left. A porter carried Bill's bags in from the consigne. I went as far as the inner gate to the tracks.

“So long, fella,” Bill said.

“So long, kid!”

“It was swell. I've had a swell time.”

“Will you be in Paris?”

“No, I have to sail on the 17th. So long, fella!”

“So long, old kid!”

He went in through the gate to the train. The porter went ahead with the bags. I watched the train pull out. Bill was at one of the windows. The window passed, the rest of the train passed, and the tracks were empty. I went outside to the car.

“How much do we owe you?” I asked the driver. The price to Bayonne had been fixed at a hundred and fifty pesetas.

“Two hundred pesetas.”

“How much more will it be if you drive me to San Sebastian on your way back?”

“Fifty pesetas.”

“Don't kid me.”

“Thirty-five pesetas.”

“It's not worth it,” I said. “Drive me to the Hotel Panier Fleuri.”

At the hotel I paid the driver and gave him a tip. The car was powdered with dust. I rubbed the rod-case through the dust. It seemed the last thing that connected me with Spain and the fiesta. The driver put the car in gear and went down the street. I watched it turn off to take the road to Spain. I went into the hotel and they gave me a room. It was the same room I had slept in when Bill and Cohn and I were in Bayonne. That seemed a very long time ago. I washed, changed my shirt, and went out in the town.

At a newspaper kiosk I bought a copy of the
New York
Herald
and sat in a café to read it. It felt strange to be in France again. There was a safe, suburban feeling. I wished I had gone up to Paris with Bill, except that Paris would have meant more fiesta-ing. I was through with fiestas for a while. It would be quiet in San Sebastian. The season does not open there until August. I could get a good hotel room and read and swim. There was a fine beach there. There were wonderful trees along the promenade above the beach, and there were many children sent down with their nurses before the season opened. In the evening there would be band concerts under the trees across from the Café Marinas. I could sit in the Marinas and listen.

“How does one eat inside?” I asked the waiter. Inside the café was a restaurant.

“Well. Very well. One eats very well.”

“Good.”

I went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but It seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Chateau Margaux. 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. Afterward I had coffee. The waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra. He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur glass full. He said Izzarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees. The veritable 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.
The
marc
was good. I had a second
marc
after the coffee.

The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I over-tipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again sometime and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.

Next morning I tipped everyone a little too much at the hotel to make more friends, and left on the morning train for San Sebastian. At the station I did not tip the porter more than I should because I did not think I would ever see him again. I only wanted a few good French friends in Bayonne to make me welcome in case I should come back there again. I knew that if they remembered me their friendship would be loyal.

At Irun we had to change trains and show passports. I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France. I felt I was a fool to be going back into Spain. In Spain you could not tell about anything. I felt like a fool to be going back into it, but I stood in line with my passport, opened my bags for the customs, bought a ticket, went through a gate, climbed onto the train, and after forty minutes and eight tunnels I was at 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. The streets feel as though they had just been sprinkled. It is always cool and shady on certain streets on the hottest day. I went to a hotel in the town where I had stopped before, and they gave me a room with a balcony that opened out above the roofs of the town. There was a green mountainside beyond the roofs.

I unpacked my bags and stacked my books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry. Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch. Spain had not changed to summer time, so I was early. I set my watch again. I had recovered an hour by coming to San Sebastian.

As I went into the dining room the concierge brought me a police bulletin to fill out. I signed it and asked him for two telegraph forms, and wrote a message to the Hotel Montoya, telling them to forward all mail and telegrams for me to this address. I calculated how many days I would be in San Sebastian and then wrote out a wire to the office asking them to hold mail, but forward all wires for me to San Sebastian for six days. Then I went in and had lunch.

After lunch I went up to my room, read a while, and went to sleep. When I woke it was half past four. I found my swimming suit, wrapped it with a comb in a towel, and went downstairs and walked up the street to the Concha. The tide was about half-way out. The beach was smooth and firm, and the sand yellow. I went into a bathing cabin, undressed, put on my suit, and walked across the smooth sand to the sea. The sand was warm under bare feet. There were quite a few people in the water and on the beach. Out beyond where the headlands of the Concha almost met to form the harbor there was a white line of breakers and the open sea. Although the tide was going out, there were a few slow rollers. They came in like undulations in the water, gathered weight of water, and then broke smoothly on the warm sand. I waded out. The water was cold. As a roller came I dove, swam out under water, and came to the surface with all the chill gone. I swam out to the raft, pulled myself up, and lay on the hot planks. A boy and girl were at the other end. The girl had undone the top strap of her bathing suit and was browning her back. The boy lay face downward on the raft and talked to her. She laughed at things he said, and turned her brown back in the sun. I lay on the raft in the sun until I was dry. Then I tried several dives. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom. I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark. The raft made a dark shadow. I came out of water beside the raft, pulled up, dove once more, holding it for length, and then swam ashore. I lay on the beach until I was dry, then went into the bathing cabin, took off my suit, sloshed myself with fresh water, and rubbed dry.