PART 2

CHAPTER 13 

One morning I went down to breakfast and the Englishman, Harris, was already at the table. He was reading the paper through spectacles. He looked up and smiled. 

“Good morning,” he said. “Letter for you. I stopped at the post and they gave it me with mine.” 

The letter was at my place at the table, leaning against a coffee-cup. Harris was reading the paper again. I opened the letter. It had been forwarded from Pamplona. It was dated San Sebastian, Sunday: 

    DEAR JAKE, 

    We got here Friday, Brett passed out on the train, so brought her here for 3 days rest     with old friends of ours. We go to Montoya Hotel Pamplona Tuesday, arriving at I don’t know what hour. Will you send a note by the bus to tell us what to do to rejoin you all on Wednesday. All our love and sorry to be late, but Brett was really done in and will be quite all right by Tues. and is practically so now. I know her so well and try to look after her but it’s not so easy. Love to all the chaps, 

                                                          MICHAEL.

“What day of the week is it?” I asked Harris. 

“Wednesday, I think. Yes, quite. Wednesday. Wonderful how one loses track of the days up here in the mountains.” 

“Yes. We’ve been here nearly a week.” 

“I hope you’re not thinking of leaving?” 

“Yes. We’ll go in on the afternoon bus, I’m afraid.” 

“What a rotten business. I had hoped we’d all have another go at the Irati together.” 

“We have to go _into_ Pamplona. We’re meeting people there.” 

“What rotten luck for me. We’ve had a jolly time here at Burguete.” 

“Come on in to Pamplona. We can play some bridge there, and there’s going to be a damned fine fiesta.” 

“I’d like to. Awfully nice of you to ask me. I’d best stop on here, though. I’ve not much more time to fish.” 

“You want those big ones in the Irati.” 

“I say, I do, you know. They’re enormous trout there.” 

“I’d like to try them once more.” 

“Do. Stop over another day. Be a good chap.” 

“We really have to get into town,” I said. 

“What a pity.” 

After breakfast Bill and I were sitting warming in the sun on a bench out in front of the inn and talking it over. I saw a girl coming up the road from the centre of the town. She stopped in front of us and took a telegram out of the leather wallet that hung against her skirt. 

“Por ustedes?” 

I looked at it. The address was: “Barnes, Burguete.” 

“Yes. It’s for us.” 

She brought out a book for me to sign, and I gave her a couple of coppers. The telegram was in Spanish: “Vengo Jueves Cohn.” 

I handed it to Bill. 

“What does the word Cohn mean?” he asked. 

“What a lousy telegram!” I said. “He could send ten words for the same price. ‘I come Thursday.’ That gives you a lot of dope, doesn’t it?” 

“It gives you all the dope that’s of interest to Cohn.” 

“We’re going in, anyway,” I said. “There’s no use trying to move Brett and Mike out here and back before the fiesta. Should we answer it?” 

“We might as well,” said Bill. “There’s no need for us to be snooty.” 

We walked up to the post-office and asked for a telegraph blank. 

“What will we say?” Bill asked. 

“‘Arriving to-night.’ That’s enough.” 

We paid for the message and walked back to the inn. Harris was there and the three of us walked up to Roncesvalles. We went through the monastery. 

“It’s a remarkable place,” Harris said, when we came out. “But you know I’m not much on those sort of places.” 

“Me either,” Bill said. 

“It’s a remarkable place, though,” Harris said. “I wouldn’t not have seen it. I’d been intending coming up each day.” 

“It isn’t the same as fishing, though, is it?” Bill asked. He liked Harris. 

“I say not.” 

We were standing in front of the old chapel of the monastery. 

“Isn’t that a pub across the way?” Harris asked. “Or do my eyes deceive me?” 

“It has the look of a pub,” Bill said. 

“It looks to me like a pub,” I said. 

“I say,” said Harris, “let’s utilize it.” He had taken up utilizing from Bill. 

We had a bottle of wine apiece. Harris would not let us pay. He talked Spanish quite well, and the innkeeper would not take our money. 

“I say. You don’t know what it’s meant to me to have you chaps up here.” 

“We’ve had a grand time, Harris.” 

Harris was a little tight. 

“I say. Really you don’t know how much it means. I’ve not had much fun since the war.” 

“We’ll fish together again, some time. Don’t you forget it, Harris.” 

“We must. We _have_ had such a jolly good time.” 

“How about another bottle around?” 

“Jolly good idea,” said Harris. 

“This is mine,” said Bill. “Or we don’t drink it.” 

“I wish you’d let me pay for it. It _does_ give me pleasure, you know.” 

“This is going to give me pleasure,” Bill said. 

The innkeeper brought in the fourth bottle. We had kept the same glasses. Harris lifted his glass. 

“I say. You know this does utilize well.” 

Bill slapped him on the back. 

“Good old Harris.” 

“I say. You know my name isn’t really Harris. It’s Wilson-Harris. All one name. With a hyphen, you know.” 

“Good old Wilson-Harris,” Bill said. “We call you Harris because we’re so fond of you.” 

“I say, Barnes. You don’t know what this all means to me.” 

“Come on and utilize another glass,” I said. 

“Barnes. Really, Barnes, you can’t know. That’s all.” 

“Drink up, Harris.” 

We walked back down the road from Roncesvalles with Harris between us. We had lunch at the inn and Harris went with us to the bus. He gave us his card, with his address in London and his club and his business address, and as we got on the bus he handed us each an envelope. I opened mine and there were a dozen flies in it. Harris had tied them himself. He tied all his own flies. 

“I say, Harris—” I began. 

“No, no!” he said. He was climbing down from the bus. “They’re not first-rate flies at all. I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had.” 

The bus started. Harris stood in front of the post-office. He waved. As we started along the road he turned and walked back toward the inn. 

“Say, wasn’t that Harris nice?” Bill said. 

“I think he really did have a good time.” 

“Harris? You bet he did.” 

“I wish he’d come into Pamplona.” 

“He wanted to fish.” 

“Yes. You couldn’t tell how English would mix with each other, anyway.” 

“I suppose not.” 

We got into Pamplona late in the afternoon and the bus stopped in front of the Hotel Montoya. Out in the plaza they were stringing electric-light wires to light the plaza for the fiesta. A few kids came up when the bus stopped, and a customs officer for the town made all the people getting down from the bus open their bundles on the sidewalk. We went into the hotel and on the stairs I met Montoya. He shook hands with us, smiling in his embarrassed way. 

“Your friends are here,” he said. 

“Mr. Campbell?” 

“Yes. Mr. Cohn and Mr. Campbell and Lady Ashley.” 

He smiled as though there were something I would hear about. 

“When did they get in?” 

“Yesterday. I’ve saved you the rooms you had.” 

“That’s fine. Did you give Mr. Campbell the room on the plaza?” 

“Yes. All the rooms we looked at.” 

“Where are our friends now?” 

“I think they went to the pelota.” 

“And how about the bulls?” 

Montoya smiled. “To-night,” he said. “To-night at seven o’clock they bring in the Villar bulls, and to-morrow come the Miuras. Do you all go down?” 

“Oh, yes. They’ve never seen a desencajonada.” 

Montoya put his hand on my shoulder. 

“I’ll see you there.” 

He smiled again. He always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us; a rather shocking but really very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something that we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand. 

“Your friend, is he aficionado, too?” Montoya smiled at Bill. 

“Yes. He came all the way from New York to see the San Fermines.” 

“Yes?” Montoya politely disbelieved. “But he’s not aficionado like you.” 

He put his hand on my shoulder again embarrassedly. 

“Yes,” I said. “He’s a real aficionado.” 

“But he’s not aficionado like you are.” 

Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya’s hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back. The good ones came each year. In Montoya’s room were their photographs. The photographs were dedicated to Juanito Montoya or to his sister. The photographs of bull-fighters Montoya had really believed in were framed. Photographs of bull-fighters who had been without aficion Montoya kept in a drawer of his desk. They often had the most flattering inscriptions. But they did not mean anything. One day Montoya took them all out and dropped them in the waste-basket. He did not want them around. 

We often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. I had stopped at the Montoya for several years. We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasure of discovering what we each felt. Men would come in from distant towns and before they left Pamplona stop and talk for a few minutes with Montoya about bulls. These men were aficionados. Those who were aficionados could always get rooms even when the hotel was full. Montoya introduced me to some of them. They were always very polite at first, and it amused them very much that I should be an American. Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, but he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spiritual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a “Buen hombre.” But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain. 

Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in bull-fighting. 

Bill had gone up-stairs as we came in, and I found him washing and changing in his room. 

“Well,” he said, “talk a lot of Spanish?” 

“He was telling me about the bulls coming in to-night.” 

“Let’s find the gang and go down.” 

“All right. They’ll probably be at the café.” 

“Have you got tickets?” 

“Yes. I got them for all the unloadings.” 

“What’s it like?” He was pulling his cheek before the glass, looking to see if there were unshaved patches under the line of the jaw. 

“It’s pretty good,” I said. “They let the bulls out of the cages one at a time, and they have steers in the corral to receive them and keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down.” 

“Do they ever gore the steers?” 

“Sure. Sometimes they go right after them and kill them.” 

“Can’t the steers do anything?” 

“No. They’re trying to make friends.” 

“What do they have them in for?” 

“To quiet down the bulls and keep them from breaking horns against the stone walls, or goring each other.” 

“Must be swell being a steer.” 

We went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the Café Iruña. There were two lonely looking ticket-houses standing in the square. Their windows, marked SOL, SOL Y SOMBRA, and SOMBRA, were shut. They would not open until the day before the fiesta. 

Across the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iruña extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street. I looked for Brett and Mike at the tables. There they were. Brett and Mike and Robert Cohn. Brett was wearing a Basque beret. So was Mike. Robert Cohn was bare-headed and wearing his spectacles. Brett saw us coming and waved. Her eyes crinkled up as we came up to the table. 

“Hello, you chaps!” she called. 

Brett was happy. Mike had a way of getting an intensity of feeling into shaking hands. Robert Cohn shook hands because we were back. 

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked. 

“I brought them up here,” Cohn said. 

“What rot,” Brett said. “We’d have gotten here earlier if you hadn’t come.” 

“You’d never have gotten here.” 

“What rot! You chaps are brown. Look at Bill.” 

“Did you get good fishing?” Mike asked. “We wanted to join you.” 

“It wasn’t bad. We missed you.” 

“I wanted to come,” Cohn said, “but I thought I ought to bring them.” 

“You bring us. What rot.” 

“Was it really good?” Mike asked. “Did you take many?” 

“Some days we took a dozen apiece. There was an Englishman up there.” 

“Named Harris,” Bill said. “Ever know him, Mike? He was in the war, too.” 

“Fortunate fellow,” Mike said. “What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back.” 

“Don’t be an ass.” 

“Were you in the war, Mike?” Cohn asked. 

“Was I not.” 

“He was a very distinguished soldier,” Brett said. “Tell them about the time your horse bolted down Piccadilly.” 

“I’ll not. I’ve told that four times.” 

“You never told me,” Robert Cohn said. 

“I’ll not tell that story. It reflects discredit on me.” 

“Tell them about your medals.” 

“I’ll not. That story reflects great discredit on me.” 

“What story’s that?” 

“Brett will tell you. She tells all the stories that reflect discredit on me.” 

“Go on. Tell it, Brett.” 

“Should I?”

“I’ll tell it myself.” 

“What medals have you got, Mike?” 

“I haven’t got any medals.” 

“You must have some.” 

“I suppose I’ve the usual medals. But I never sent in for them. One time there was this wopping big dinner and the Prince of Wales was to be there, and the cards said medals will be worn. So naturally I had no medals, and I stopped at my tailor’s and he was impressed by the invitation, and I thought that’s a good piece of business, and I said to him: ‘You’ve got to fix me up with some medals.’ He said: ‘What medals, sir?’ And I said: ‘Oh, any medals. Just give me a few medals.’ So he said: ‘What medals _have_ you, sir?’ And I said: ‘How should I know?’ Did he think I spent all my time reading the bloody gazette? ‘Just give me a good lot. Pick them out yourself.’ So he got me some medals, you know, miniature medals, and handed me the box, and I put it in my pocket and forgot it. Well, I went to the dinner, and it was the night they’d shot Henry Wilson, so the Prince didn’t come and the King didn’t come, and no one wore any medals, and all these coves were busy taking off their medals, and I had mine in my pocket.” 

He stopped for us to laugh. 

“Is that all?” 

“That’s all. Perhaps I didn’t tell it right.” 

“You didn’t,” said Brett. “But no matter.” 

We were all laughing. 

“Ah, yes,” said Mike. “I know now. It was a damn dull dinner, and I couldn’t stick it, so I left. Later on in the evening I found the box in my pocket. What’s this? I said. Medals? Bloody military medals? So I cut them all off their backing—you know, they put them on a strip—and gave them all around. Gave one to each girl. Form of souvenir. They thought I was hell’s own shakes of a soldier. Give away medals in a night club. Dashing fellow.” 

“Tell the rest,” Brett said. 

“Don’t you think that was funny?” Mike asked. We were all laughing. “It was. I swear it was. Any rate, my tailor wrote me and wanted the medals back. Sent a man around. Kept on writing for months. Seems some chap had left them to be cleaned. Frightfully military cove. Set hell’s own store by them.” Mike paused. “Rotten luck for the tailor,” he said. 

“You don’t mean it,” Bill said. “I should think it would have been grand for the tailor.” 

“Frightfully good tailor. Never believe it to see me now,” Mike said. “I used to pay him a hundred pounds a year just to keep him quiet. So he wouldn’t send me any bills. Frightful blow to him when I went bankrupt. It was right after the medals. Gave his letters rather a bitter tone.” 

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. 

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” 

“What brought it on?” 

“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.” 

“Tell them about in the court,” Brett said. 

“I don’t remember,” Mike said. “I was just a little tight.” 

“Tight!” Brett exclaimed. “You were blind!” 

“Extraordinary thing,” Mike said. “Met my former partner the other day. Offered to buy me a drink.” 

“Tell them about your learned counsel,” Brett said. 

“I will not,” Mike said. “My learned counsel was blind, too. I say this is a gloomy subject. Are we going down and see these bulls unloaded or not?” 

“Let’s go down.” 

We called the waiter, paid, and started to walk through the town. I started off walking with Brett, but Robert Cohn came up and joined her on the other side. The three of us walked along, past the Ayuntamiento with the banners hung from the balcony, down past the market and down past the steep street that led to the bridge across the Arga. There were many people walking to go and see the bulls, and carriages drove down the hill and across the bridge, the drivers, the horses, and the whips rising above the walking people in the street. Across the bridge we turned up a road to the corrals. We passed a wine-shop with a sign in the window: Good Wine 30 Centimes A Liter. 

“That’s where we’ll go when funds get low,” Brett said.

The woman standing in the door of the wine-shop looked at us as we passed. She called to some one in the house and three girls came to the window and stared. They were staring at Brett. 

At the gate of the corrals two men took tickets from the people that went in. We went in through the gate. There were trees inside and a low, stone house. At the far end was the stone wall of the corrals, with apertures in the stone that were like loopholes running all along the face of each corral. A ladder led up to the top of the wall, and people were climbing up the ladder and spreading down to stand on the walls that separated the two corrals. As we came up the ladder, walking across the grass under the trees, we passed the big, gray painted cages with the bulls in them. There was one bull in each travelling-box. They had come by train from a bull-breeding ranch in Castile, and had been unloaded off flat-cars at the station and brought up here to be let out of their cages into the corrals. Each cage was stencilled with the name and the brand of the bull-breeder. 

We climbed up and found a place on the wall looking down into the corral. The stone walls were whitewashed, and there was straw on the ground and wooden feed-boxes and water-troughs set against the wall. 

“Look up there,” I said. 

Beyond the river rose the plateau of the town. All along the old walls and ramparts people were standing. The three lines of fortifications made three black lines of people. Above the walls there were heads in the windows of the houses. At the far end of the plateau boys had climbed into the trees. 

“They must think something is going to happen,” Brett said. 

“They want to see the bulls.” 

Mike and Bill were on the other wall across the pit of the corral. They waved to us. People who had come late were standing behind us, pressing against us when other people crowded them. 

“Why don’t they start?” Robert Cohn asked. 

A single mule was hitched to one of the cages and dragged it up against the gate in the corral wall. The men shoved and lifted it with crowbars into position against the gate. Men were standing on the wall ready to pull up the gate of the corral and then the gate of the cage. At the other end of the corral a gate opened and two steers came in, swaying their heads and trotting, their lean flanks swinging. They stood together at the far end, their heads toward the gate where the bull would enter. 

“They don’t look happy,” Brett said. 

The men on top of the wall leaned back and pulled up the door of the corral. Then they pulled up the door of the cage. 

I leaned way over the wall and tried to see into the cage. It was dark. Some one rapped on the cage with an iron bar. Inside something seemed to explode. The bull, striking into the wood from side to side with his horns, made a great noise. Then I saw a dark muzzle and the shadow of horns, and then, with a clattering on the wood in the hollow box, the bull charged and came out into the corral, skidding with his forefeet in the straw as he stopped, his head up, the great hump of muscle on his neck swollen tight, his body muscles quivering as he looked up at the crowd on the stone walls. The two steers backed away against the wall, their heads sunken, their eyes watching the bull. 

The bull saw them and charged. A man shouted from behind one of the boxes and slapped his hat against the planks, and the bull, before he reached the steer, turned, gathered himself and charged where the man had been, trying to reach him behind the planks with a half-dozen quick, searching drives with the right horn. 

“My God, isn’t he beautiful?” Brett said. We were looking right down on him. 

“Look how he knows how to use his horns,” I said. “He’s got a left and a right just like a boxer.”

 “Not really?” 

“You watch.” 

“It goes too fast.” 

“Wait. There’ll be another one in a minute.” 

They had backed up another cage into the entrance. In the far corner a man, from behind one of the plank shelters, attracted the bull, and while the bull was facing away the gate was pulled up and a second bull came out into the corral. 

He charged straight for the steers and two men ran out from behind the planks and shouted, to turn him. He did not change his direction and the men shouted: “Hah! Hah! Toro!” and waved their arms; the two steers turned sideways to take the shock, and the bull drove into one of the steers. 

“Don’t look,” I said to Brett. She was watching, fascinated. 

“Fine,” I said. “If it doesn’t buck you.” 

“I saw it,” she said. “I saw him shift from his left to his right horn.” 

“Damn good!” 

The steer was down now, his neck stretched out, his head twisted, he lay the way he had fallen. Suddenly the bull left off and made for the other steer which had been standing at the far end, his head swinging, watching it all. The steer ran awkwardly and the bull caught him, hooked him lightly in the flank, and then turned away and looked up at the crowd on the walls, his crest of muscle rising. The steer came up to him and made as though to nose at him and the bull hooked perfunctorily. The next time he nosed at the steer and then the two of them trotted over to the other bull. 

When the next bull came out, all three, the two bulls and the steer, stood together, their heads side by side, their horns against the newcomer. In a few minutes the steer picked the new bull up, quieted him down, and made him one of the herd. When the last two bulls had been unloaded the herd were all together. 

The steer who had been gored had gotten to his feet and stood against the stone wall. None of the bulls came near him, and he did not attempt to join the herd. 

We climbed down from the wall with the crowd, and had a last look at the bulls through the loopholes in the wall of the corral. They were all quiet now, their heads down. We got a carriage outside and rode up to the café. Mike and Bill came in half an hour later. They had stopped on the way for several drinks. 

We were sitting in the café. 

“That’s an extraordinary business,” Brett said. 

“Will those last ones fight as well as the first?” Robert Cohn asked. “They seemed to quiet down awfully fast.” 

“They all know each other,” I said. “They’re only dangerous when they’re alone, or only two or three of them together.” 

“What do you mean, dangerous?” Bill said. “They all looked dangerous to me.” 

“They only want to kill when they’re alone. Of course, if you went in there you’d probably detach one of them from the herd, and he’d be dangerous.” 

“That’s too complicated,” Bill said. “Don’t you ever detach me from the herd, Mike.” 

“I say,” Mike said, “they _were_ fine bulls, weren’t they? Did you see their horns?” 

“Did I not,” said Brett. “I had no idea what they were like.” 

“Did you see the one hit that steer?” Mike asked. “That was extraordinary.” 

“It’s no life being a steer,” Robert Cohn said. 

“Don’t you think so?” Mike said. “I would have thought you’d loved being a steer, Robert.” 

“What do you mean, Mike?” 

“They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they’re always hanging about so.” 

We were embarrassed. Bill laughed. Robert Cohn was angry. Mike went on talking. 

“I should think you’d love it. You’d never have to say a word. Come on, Robert. Do say something. Don’t just sit there.” 

“I said something, Mike. Don’t you remember? About the steers.” 

“Oh, say something more. Say something funny. Can’t you see we’re all having a good time here?” 

“Come off it, Michael. You’re drunk,” Brett said. 

“I’m not drunk. I’m quite serious. _Is_ Robert Cohn going to follow Brett around like a steer all the time?” 

“Shut up, Michael. Try and show a little breeding.” 

“Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren’t the bulls lovely? Don’t you like them, Bill? Why don’t you say something, Robert? Don’t sit there looking like a bloody funeral. What if Brett did sleep with you? She’s slept with lots of better people than you.” 

“Shut up,” Cohn said. He stood up. “Shut up, Mike.” 

“Oh, don’t stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won’t make any difference to me. Tell me, Robert. Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer? Don’t you know you’re not wanted? I know when I’m not wanted. Why don’t you know when you’re not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren’t wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer. Do you think that’s right?” 

“Shut up. You’re drunk.” 

“Perhaps I am drunk. Why aren’t you drunk? Why don’t you ever get drunk, Robert? You know you didn’t have a good time at San Sebastian because none of our friends would invite you on any of the parties. You can’t blame them hardly. Can you? I asked them to. They wouldn’t do it. You can’t blame them, now. Can you? Now, answer me. Can you blame them?” 

“Go to hell, Mike.” 

“I can’t blame them. Can you blame them? Why do you follow Brett around? Haven’t you any manners? How do you think it makes _me_ feel?” 

“You’re a splendid one to talk about manners,” Brett said. “You’ve such lovely manners.” 

“Come on, Robert,” Bill said. 

“What do you follow her around for?” 

Bill stood up and took hold of Cohn. 

“Don’t go,” Mike said. “Robert Cohn’s going to buy a drink.” 

Bill went off with Cohn. Cohn’s face was sallow. Mike went on talking. I sat and listened for a while. Brett looked disgusted. 

“I say, Michael, you might not be such a bloody ass,” she interrupted. “I’m not saying he’s not right, you know.” She turned to me. 

The emotion left Mike’s voice. We were all friends together. 

“I’m not so damn drunk as I sounded,” he said. 

“I know you’re not,” Brett said. 

“We’re none of us sober,” I said. 

“I didn’t say anything I didn’t mean.” 

“But you put it so badly,” Brett laughed. 

“He was an ass, though. He came down to San Sebastian where he damn well wasn’t wanted. He hung around Brett and just _looked_ at her. It made me damned well sick.” 

“He did behave very badly,” Brett said. 

“Mark you. Brett’s had affairs with men before. She tells me all about everything. She gave me this chap Cohn’s letters to read. I wouldn’t read them.” 

“Damned noble of you.” 

“No, listen, Jake. Brett’s gone off with men. But they weren’t ever Jews, and they didn’t come and hang about afterward.” 

“Damned good chaps,” Brett said. “It’s all rot to talk about it. Michael and I understand each other.” 

“She gave me Robert Cohn’s letters. I wouldn’t read them.” 

“You wouldn’t read any letters, darling. You wouldn’t read mine.” 

“I can’t read letters,” Mike said. “Funny, isn’t it?” 

“You can’t read anything.” 

“No. You’re wrong there. I read quite a bit. I read when I’m at home.” 

“You’ll be writing next,” Brett said. “Come on, Michael. Do buck up. You’ve got to go through with this thing now. He’s here. Don’t spoil the fiesta.” 

“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 cafés 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 café.” 

“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. 

 

CHAPTER 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 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.

 000 

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 the entrance of the bull-ring was already in place and made a long pen; the crowd would come running down with the bulls behind them on the morning of the day of the first bull-fight. Out across the plain, where the horse and cattle fair would be, some gypsies had camped under the trees. The wine and aguardiente sellers were putting up their booths. One booth advertised =ANIS DEL TORO=. The cloth sign hung against the planks in the hot sun. In the big square that was the centre of the town there was no change yet. We sat in the white wicker chairs on the terrasse of the café and watched the motor-buses come in and unload peasants from the country coming in to the market, and we watched the buses fill up and start out with peasants sitting with their saddle-bags full of the things they had bought in the town. The tall gray motor-buses were the only life of the square except for the pigeons and the man with a hose who sprinkled the gravelled square and watered the streets. 

In the evening was the paseo. For an hour after dinner every one, all the good-looking girls, the officers from the garrison, all the fashionable people of the town, walked in the street on one side of the square while the café tables filled with the regular after-dinner crowd. 

During the morning I usually sat in the café and read the Madrid papers and then walked in the town or out into the country. Sometimes Bill went along. Sometimes he wrote in his room. Robert Cohn spent the mornings studying Spanish or trying to get a shave at the barber-shop. Brett and Mike never got up until noon. We all had a vermouth at the café. It was a quiet life and no one was drunk. I went to church a couple of times, once with Brett. She said she wanted to hear me go to confession, but I told her that not only was it impossible but it was not as interesting as it sounded, and, besides, it would be in a language she did not know. We met Cohn as we came out of church, and although it was obvious he had followed us, yet he was very pleasant and nice, and we all three went for a walk out to the gypsy camp, and Brett had her fortune told. 

It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Cohn. You could not be upset about anything on a day like that. 

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. People had been coming in all day from the country, but they were assimilated in the town and you did not notice them. The square was as quiet in the hot sun as on any other day. The peasants were in the outlying wine-shops. There they were drinking, getting ready for the fiesta. They had come in so recently from the plains and the hills that it was necessary that they make their shifting in values gradually. They could not start in paying café prices. They got their money’s worth in the wine-shops. Money still had a definite value in hours worked and bushels of grain sold. Late in the fiesta it would not matter what they paid, nor where they bought. 

Now on the day of the starting of the fiesta of San Fermin they had been in the wine-shops of the narrow streets of the town since early morning. Going down the streets in the morning on the way to mass in the cathedral, I heard them singing through the open doors of the shops. They were warming up. There were many people at the eleven o’clock mass. San Fermin is also a religious festival. 

I walked down the hill from the cathedral and up the street to the café on the square. It was a little before noon. Robert Cohn and Bill were sitting at one of the tables. The marble-topped tables and the white wicker chairs were gone. They were replaced by cast-iron tables and severe folding chairs. The café was like a battleship stripped for action. To-day the waiters did not leave you alone all morning to read without asking if you wanted to order something. A waiter came up as soon as I sat down. 

“What are you drinking?” I asked Bill and Robert. 

“Sherry,” Cohn said. 

“Jerez,” I said to the waiter. 

Before the waiter brought the sherry the rocket that announced the fiesta went up in the square. It burst and there was a gray ball of smoke high up above the Theatre Gayarre, across on the other side of the plaza. The ball of smoke hung in the sky like a shrapnel burst, and as I watched, another rocket came up to it, trickling smoke in the bright sunlight. I saw the bright flash as it burst and another little cloud of smoke appeared. By the time the second rocket had burst there were so many people in the arcade, that had been empty a minute before, that the waiter, holding the bottle high up over his head, could hardly get through the crowd to our table. People were coming into the square from all sides, and down the street we heard the pipes and the fifes and the drums coming. They were playing the _riau-riau_ music, the pipes shrill and the drums pounding, and behind them came the men and boys dancing. When the fifers stopped they all crouched down in the street, and when the reed-pipes and the fifes shrilled, and the flat, dry, hollow drums tapped it out again, they all went up in the air dancing. In the crowd you saw only the heads and shoulders of the dancers going up and down. 

In the square a man, bent over, was playing on a reed-pipe, and a crowd of children were following him shouting, and pulling at his clothes. He came out of the square, the children following him, and piped them past the café and down a side street. We saw his blank pockmarked face as he went by, piping, the children close behind him shouting and pulling at him. 

“He must be the village idiot,” Bill said. “My God! look at that!” 

Down the street came dancers. The street was solid with dancers, all men. They were all dancing in time behind their own fifers and drummers. They were a club of some sort, and all wore workmen’s blue smocks, and red handkerchiefs around their necks, and carried a great banner on two poles. The banner danced up and down with them as they came down surrounded by the crowd. 

“Hurray for Wine! Hurray for the Foreigners!” was painted on the banner. 

“Where are the foreigners?” Robert Cohn asked. 

“We’re the foreigners,” Bill said. 

All the time rockets were going up. The café tables were all full now. The square was emptying of people and the crowd was filling the cafés. 

“Where’s Brett and Mike?” Bill asked. 

“I’ll go and get them,” Cohn said. 

“Bring them here.” 

The fiesta was really started. It kept up day and night for seven days. The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the fiesta you had the feeling, even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it heard. It was the same feeling about any action. It was a fiesta and it went on for seven days. 

That afternoon was the big religious procession. San Fermin was translated from one church to another. In the procession were all the dignitaries, civil and religious. We could not see them because the crowd was too great. Ahead of the formal procession and behind it danced the _riau-riau_ dancers. There was one mass of yellow shirts dancing up and down in the crowd. All we could see of the procession through the closely pressed people that crowded all the side streets and curbs were the great giants, cigar-store Indians, thirty feet high, Moors, a King and Queen, whirling and waltzing solemnly to the _riau-riau_. 

They were all standing outside the chapel where San Fermin and the dignitaries had passed in, leaving a guard of soldiers, the giants, with the men who danced in them standing beside their resting frames, and the dwarfs moving with their whacking bladders through the crowd. We started inside and there was a smell of incense and people filing back into the church, but Brett was stopped just inside the door because she had no hat, so we went out again and along the street that ran back from the chapel into town. The street was lined on both sides with people keeping their place at the curb for the return of the procession. Some dancers formed a circle around Brett and started to dance. They wore big wreaths of white garlics around their necks. They took Bill and me by the arms and put us in the circle. Bill started to dance, too. They were all chanting. Brett wanted to dance but they did not want her to. They wanted her as an image to dance around. When the song ended with the sharp _riau-riau!_ they rushed us into a wine-shop. 

We stood at the counter. They had Brett seated on a wine-cask. It was dark in the wine-shop and full of men singing, hard-voiced singing. Back of the counter they drew the wine from casks. I put down money for the wine, but one of the men picked it up and put it back in my pocket. 

“I want a leather wine-bottle,” Bill said. 

“There’s a place down the street,” I said. “I’ll go get a couple.” 

The dancers did not want me to go out. Three of them were sitting on the high wine-cask beside Brett, teaching her to drink out of the wine-skins. They had hung a wreath of garlics around her neck. Some one insisted on giving her a glass. Somebody was teaching Bill a song. Singing it into his ear. Beating time on Bill’s back. 

I explained to them that I would be back. Outside in the street I went down the street looking for the shop that made leather wine-bottles. The crowd was packed on the sidewalks and many of the shops were shuttered, and I could not find it. I walked as far as the church, looking on both sides of the street. Then I asked a man and he took me by the arm and led me to it. The shutters were up but the door was open. 

Inside it smelled of fresh tanned leather and hot tar. A man was stencilling completed wine-skins. They hung from the roof in bunches. He took one down, blew it up, screwed the nozzle tight, and then jumped on it 

“See! It doesn’t leak.” 

“I want another one, too. A big one.” 

He took down a big one that would hold a gallon or more, from the roof. He blew it up, his cheeks puffing ahead of the wine-skin, and stood on the bota holding on to a chair. 

“What are you going to do? Sell them in Bayonne?” 

“No. Drink out of them.” 

He slapped me on the back. 

“Good man. Eight pesetas for the two. The lowest price.” 

The man who was stencilling the new ones and tossing them into a pile stopped. 

“It’s true,” he said. “Eight pesetas is cheap.” 

I paid and went out and along the street back to the wine-shop. It was darker than ever inside and very crowded. I did not see Brett and Bill, and some one said they were in the back room. At the counter the girl filled the two wine-skins for me. One held two litres. The other held five litres. Filling them both cost three pesetas sixty centimos. Some one at the counter, that I had never seen before, tried to pay for the wine, but I finally paid for it myself. The man who had wanted to pay then bought me a drink. He would not let me buy one in return, but said he would take a rinse of the mouth from the new wine-bag. He tipped the big five-litre bag up and squeezed it so the wine hissed against the back of his throat. 

“All right,” he said, and handed back the bag. 

In the back room Brett and Bill were sitting on barrels surrounded by the dancers. Everybody had his arms on everybody else’s shoulders, and they were all singing. Mike was sitting at a table with several men in their shirt-sleeves, eating from a bowl of tuna fish, chopped onions and vinegar. They were all drinking wine and mopping up the oil and vinegar with pieces of bread. 

“Hello, Jake. Hello!” Mike called. “Come here. I want you to meet my friends. We’re all having an hors-d’œuvre.” 

I was introduced to the people at the table. They supplied their names to Mike and sent for a fork for me. 

“Stop eating their dinner, Michael,” Brett shouted from the wine-barrels. 

“I don’t want to eat up your meal,” I said when some one handed me a fork. 

“Eat,” he said. “What do you think it’s here for?” 

I unscrewed the nozzle of the big wine-bottle and handed it around. Every one took a drink, tipping the wine-skin at arm’s length. 

Outside, above the singing, we could hear the music of the procession going by. 

“Isn’t that the procession?” Mike asked. 

“Nada,” some one said. “It’s nothing. Drink up. Lift the bottle.” 

“Where did they find you?” I asked Mike. 

“Some one brought me here,” Mike said. “They said you were here.” 

“Where’s Cohn?” 

“He’s passed out,” Brett called. “They’ve put him away somewhere.” 

“Where is he?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“How should we know,” Bill said. “I think he’s dead.” 

“He’s not dead,” Mike said. “I know he’s not dead. He’s just passed out on Anis del Mono.” 

As he said Anis del Mono one of the men at the table looked up, brought out a bottle from inside his smock, and handed it to me. 

“No,” I said. “No, thanks!” 

“Yes. Yes. Arriba! Up with the bottle!” 

I took a drink. It tasted of licorice and warmed all the way. I could feel it warming in my stomach. 

“Where the hell is Cohn?” 

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I’ll ask. Where is the drunken comrade?” he asked in Spanish. 

“You want to see him?” 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Not me,” said Mike. “This gent.” 

The Anis del Mono man wiped his mouth and stood up. 

“Come on.” 

In a back room Robert Cohn was sleeping quietly on some wine-casks. It was almost too dark to see his face. They had covered him with a coat and another coat was folded under his head. Around his neck and on his chest was a big wreath of twisted garlics. 

“Let him sleep,” the man whispered. “He’s all right.” 

Two hours later Cohn appeared. He came into the front room still with the wreath of garlics around his neck. The Spaniards shouted when he came in. Cohn wiped his eyes and grinned. 

“I must have been sleeping,” he said. 

“Oh, not at all,” Brett said. 

“You were only dead,” Bill said. 

“Aren’t we going to go and have some supper?” Cohn asked. 

“Do you want to eat?” 

“Yes. Why not? I’m hungry.” 

“Eat those garlics, Robert,” Mike said. “I say. Do eat those garlics.” 

Cohn stood there. His sleep had made him quite all right. 

“Do let’s go and eat,” Brett said. “I must get a bath.” 

“Come on,” Bill said. “Let’s translate Brett to the hotel.” 

We said good-bye to many people and shook hands with many people and went out. Outside it was dark. 

“What time is it do you suppose?” Cohn asked. 

“It’s to-morrow,” Mike said. “You’ve been asleep two days.” 

“No,” said Cohn, “what time is it?” 

“It’s ten o’clock.” 

“What a lot we’ve drunk.” 

“You mean what a lot _we’ve_ drunk. You went to sleep.” 

Going down the dark streets to the hotel we saw the sky-rockets going up in the square. Down the side streets that led to the square we saw the square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing. 

It was a big meal at the hotel. It was the first meal of the prices being doubled for the fiesta, and there were several new courses. After the dinner we were out in the town. I remember resolving that I would stay up all night to watch the bulls go through the streets at six o’clock in the morning, and being so sleepy that I went to bed around four o’clock. The others stayed up.

My own room was locked and I could not find the key, so I went up-stairs and slept on one of the beds in Cohn’s room. The fiesta was going on outside in the night, but I was too sleepy for it to keep me awake. When I woke it was the sound of the rocket exploding that announced the release of the bulls from the corrals at the edge of town. They would race through the streets and out to the bull-ring. I had been sleeping heavily and I woke feeling I was too late. I put on a coat of Cohn’s and went out on the balcony. Down below the narrow street was empty. All the balconies were crowded with people. Suddenly a crowd came down the street. They were all running, packed close together. They passed along and up the street toward the bull-ring and behind them came more men running faster, and then some stragglers who were really running. Behind them was a little bare space, and then the bulls galloping, tossing their heads up and down. It all went out of sight around the corner. One man fell, rolled to the gutter, and lay quiet. But the bulls went right on and did not notice him. They were all running together. 

After they went out of sight a great roar came from the bull-ring. It kept on. Then finally the pop of the rocket that meant the bulls had gotten through the people in the ring and into the corrals. I went back in the room and got into bed. I had been standing on the stone balcony in bare feet. I knew our crowd must have all been out at the bull-ring. Back in bed, I went to sleep. 

Cohn woke me when he came in. He started to undress and went over and closed the window because the people on the balcony of the house just across the street were looking in. 

“Did you see the show?” I asked. 

“Yes. We were all there.” 

“Anybody get hurt?” 

“One of the bulls got into the crowd in the ring and tossed six or eight people.” 

“How did Brett like it?” 

“It was all so sudden there wasn’t any time for it to bother anybody.” 

“I wish I’d been up.” 

“We didn’t know where you were. We went to your room but it was locked.” 

“Where did you stay up?” 

“We danced at some club.” 

“I got sleepy,” I said. 

“My gosh! I’m sleepy now,” Cohn said. “Doesn’t this thing ever stop?” 

“Not for a week.” 

Bill opened the door and put his head in. 

“Where were you, Jake?” 

“I saw them go through from the balcony. How was it?” 

“Grand.” 

“Where you going?” 

“To sleep.” 

No one was up before noon. We ate at tables set out under the arcade. The town was full of people. We had to wait for a table. After lunch we went over to the Iruña. It had filled up, and as the time for the bull-fight came it got fuller, and the tables were crowded closer. There was a close, crowded hum that came every day before the bull-fight. The café did not make this same noise at any other time, no matter how crowded it was. This hum went on, and we were in it and a part of it. 

I had taken six seats for all the fights. Three of them were barreras, the first row at the ring-side, and three were sobrepuertos, seats with wooden backs, half-way up the amphitheatre. Mike thought Brett had best sit high up for her first time, and Cohn wanted to sit with them. Bill and I were going to sit in the barreras, and I gave the extra ticket to a waiter to sell. Bill said something to Cohn about what to do and how to look so he would not mind the horses. Bill had seen one season of bull-fights. 

“I’m not worried about how I’ll stand it. I’m only afraid I may be bored,” Cohn said. 

“You think so?” 

“Don’t look at the horses, after the bull hits them,” I said to Brett. “Watch the charge and see the picador try and keep the bull off, but then don’t look again until the horse is dead if it’s been hit.” 

“I’m a little nervy about it,” Brett said. “I’m worried whether I’ll be able to go through with it all right.” 

“You’ll be all right. There’s nothing but that horse part that will bother you, and they’re only in for a few minutes with each bull. Just don’t watch when it’s bad.” 

“She’ll be all right,” Mike said. “I’ll look after her.” 

“I don’t think you’ll be bored,” Bill said. 

“I’m going over to the hotel to get the glasses and the wine-skin,” I said. “See you back here. Don’t get cock-eyed.” 

“I’ll come along,” Bill said. Brett smiled at us. 

We walked around through the arcade to avoid the heat of the square. 

“That Cohn gets me,” Bill said. “He’s got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he’ll get out of the fight will be being bored.” 

“We’ll watch him with the glasses,” I said. 

“Oh, to hell with him!” 

“He spends a lot of time there.” 

“I want him to stay there.” 

In the hotel on the stairs we met Montoya. 

“Come on,” said Montoya. “Do you want to meet Pedro Romero?” 

“Fine,” said Bill. “Let’s go see him.” 

We followed Montoya up a flight and down the corridor. 

“He’s in room number eight,” Montoya explained. “He’s getting dressed for the bull-fight.” 

Montoya knocked on the door and opened it. It was a gloomy room with a little light coming in from the window on the narrow street. There were two beds separated by a monastic partition. The electric light was on. The boy stood very straight and unsmiling in his bull-fighting clothes. His jacket hung over the back of a chair. They were just finishing winding his sash. His black hair shone under the electric light. He wore a white linen shirt and the sword-handler finished his sash and stood up and stepped back. Pedro Romero nodded, seeming very far away and dignified when we shook hands. Montoya said something about what great aficionados we were, and that we wanted to wish him luck. Romero listened very seriously. Then he turned to me. He was the best-looking boy I have ever seen. 

“You go to the bull-fight,” he said in English. 

“You know English,” I said, feeling like an idiot. 

“No,” he answered, and smiled. 

One of three men who had been sitting on the beds came up and asked us if we spoke French. “Would you like me to interpret for you? Is there anything you would like to ask Pedro Romero?” 

We thanked him. What was there that you would like to ask? The boy was nineteen years old, alone except for his sword-handler, and the three hangers-on, and the bull-fight was to commence in twenty minutes. We wished him “Mucha suerte,” shook hands, and went out. He was standing, straight and handsome and altogether by himself, alone in the room with the hangers-on as we shut the door. 

“He’s a fine boy, don’t you think so?” Montoya asked. 

“He’s a good-looking kid,” I said. 

“He looks like a torero,” Montoya said. “He has the type.” 

“He’s a fine boy.” 

“We’ll see how he is in the ring,” Montoya said. 

We found the big leather wine-bottle leaning against the wall in my room, took it and the field-glasses, locked the door, and went down-stairs. 

It was a good bull-fight. Bill and I were very excited about Pedro Romero. Montoya was sitting about ten places away. After Romero had killed his first bull Montoya caught my eye and nodded his head. This was a real one. There had not been a real one for a long time. Of the other two matadors, one was very fair and the other was passable. But there was no comparison with Romero, although neither of his bulls was much. 

Several times during the bull-fight I looked up at Mike and Brett and Cohn, with the glasses. They seemed to be all right. Brett did not look upset. All three were leaning forward on the concrete railing in front of them. 

“Let me take the glasses,” Bill said. 

“Does Cohn look bored?” I asked. 

“That kike!” 

Outside the ring, after the bull-fight was over, you could not move in the crowd. We could not make our way through but had to be moved with the whole thing, slowly, as a glacier, back to town. We had that disturbed emotional feeling that always comes after a bull-fight, and the feeling of elation that comes after a good bull-fight. The fiesta was going on. The drums pounded and the pipe music was shrill, and everywhere the flow of the crowd was broken by patches of dancers. The dancers were in a crowd, so you did not see the intricate play of the feet. All you saw was the heads and shoulders going up and down, up and down. Finally, we got out of the crowd and made for the café. The waiter saved chairs for the others, and we each ordered an absinthe and watched the crowd in the square and the dancers. 

“What do you suppose that dance is?” Bill asked. 

“It’s a sort of jota.” 

“They’re not all the same,” Bill said. “They dance differently to all the different tunes.” 

“It’s swell dancing.” 

In front of us on a clear part of the street a company of boys were dancing. The steps were very intricate and their faces were intent and concentrated. They all looked down while they danced. Their rope-soled shoes tapped and spatted on the pavement. The toes touched. The heels touched. The balls of the feet touched. Then the music broke wildly and the step was finished and they were all dancing on up the street. 

“Here come the gentry,” Bill said. 

They were crossing the street 

“Hello, men,” I said. 

“Hello, gents!” said Brett. “You saved us seats? How nice.” 

“I say,” Mike said, “that Romero what’shisname is somebody. Am I wrong?” 

“Oh, isn’t he lovely,” Brett said. “And those green trousers.” 

“Brett never took her eyes off them.” 

“I say, I must borrow your glasses to-morrow.” 

“How did it go?” 

“Wonderfully! Simply perfect. I say, it is a spectacle!” 

“How about the horses?” 

“I couldn’t help looking at them.” 

“She couldn’t take her eyes off them,” Mike said. “She’s an extraordinary wench.” 

“They do have some rather awful things happen to them,” Brett said. “I couldn’t look away, though.” 

“Did you feel all right?” 

“I didn’t feel badly at all.” 

“Robert Cohn did,” Mike put in. “You were quite green, Robert.” 

“The first horse did bother me,” Cohn said. 

“You weren’t bored, were you?” asked Bill. 

Cohn laughed. 

“No. I wasn’t bored. I wish you’d forgive me that.” 

“It’s all right,” Bill said, “so long as you weren’t bored.” 

“He didn’t look bored,” Mike said. “I thought he was going to be sick.” 

“I never felt that bad. It was just for a minute.” 

“I thought he was going to be sick. You weren’t bored, were you, Robert?” 

“Let up on that, Mike. I said I was sorry I said it.” 

“He was, you know. He was positively green.” 

“Oh, shove it along, Michael.” 

“You mustn’t ever get bored at your first bull-fight, Robert,” Mike said. “It might make such a mess.” 

“Oh, shove it along, Michael,” Brett said. 

“He said Brett was a sadist,” Mike said. “Brett’s not a sadist. She’s just a lovely, healthy wench.” 

“Are you a sadist, Brett?” I asked. 

“Hope not.” 

“He said Brett was a sadist just because she has a good, healthy stomach.” 

“Won’t be healthy long.” 

Bill got Mike started on something else than Cohn. The waiter brought the absinthe glasses. 

“Did you really like it?” Bill asked Cohn. 

“No, I can’t say I liked it. I think it’s a wonderful show.” 

“Gad, yes! What a spectacle!” Brett said. 

“I wish they didn’t have the horse part,” Cohn said. 

“They’re not important,” Bill said. “After a while you never notice anything disgusting.” 

“It is a bit strong just at the start,” Brett said. “There’s a dreadful moment for me just when the bull starts for the horse.” 

“The bulls were fine,” Cohn said. 

“They were very good,” Mike said. 

“I want to sit down below, next time.” Brett drank from her glass of absinthe. 

“She wants to see the bull-fighters close by,” Mike said. 

“They are something,” Brett said. “That Romero lad is just a child.” 

“He’s a damned good-looking boy,” I said. “When we were up in his room I never saw a better-looking kid.” 

“How old do you suppose he is?” 

“Nineteen or twenty.” 

“Just imagine it.” 

The bull-fight on the second day was much better than on the first. Brett sat between Mike and me at the barrera, and Bill and Cohn went up above. Romero was the whole show. I do not think Brett saw any other bull-fighter. No one else did either, except the hard-shelled technicians. It was all Romero. There were two other matadors, but they did not count. I sat beside Brett and explained to Brett what it was all about. I told her about watching the bull, not the horse, when the bulls charged the picadors, and got her to watching the picador place the point of his pic so that she saw what it was all about, so that it became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors. I had her watch how Romero took the bull away from a fallen horse with his cape, and how he held him with the cape and turned him, smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. She saw how Romero avoided every brusque movement and saved his bulls for the last when he wanted them, not winded and discomposed but smoothly worn down. She saw how close Romero always worked to the bull, and I pointed out to her the tricks the other bull-fighters used to make it look as though they were working closely. She saw why she liked Romero’s cape-work and why she did not like the others. 

Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. Brett saw how something that was beautiful done close to the bull was ridiculous if it were done a little way off. I told her how since the death of Joselito all the bull-fighters had been developing a technic that simulated this appearance of danger in order to give a fake emotional feeling, while the bull-fighter was really safe. 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, while he prepared him for the killing. 

“I’ve never seen him do an awkward thing,” Brett said. 

“You won’t until he gets frightened,” I said. 

“He’ll never be frightened,” Mike said. “He knows too damned much.” 

“He knew everything when he started. The others can’t ever learn what he was born with.” 

“And God, what looks,” Brett said. 

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

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

“Be a good chap, Jake. Don’t tell her anything more about him. Tell her how they beat their old mothers.” 

“Tell me what drunks they are.” 

“Oh, frightful,” Mike said. “Drunk all day and spend all their time beating their poor old mothers.” 

“He looks that way,” Brett said. 

“Doesn’t he?” I said. 

They had hitched the mules to the dead bull and then the whips cracked, the men ran, and the mules, straining forward, their legs pushing, broke into a gallop, and the bull, one horn up, his head on its side, swept a swath smoothly across the sand and out the red gate. 

“This next is the last one.” 

“Not really,” Brett said. She leaned forward on the barrera. Romero waved his picadors to their places, then stood, his cape against his chest, looking across the ring to where the bull would come out. 

After it was over we went out and were pressed tight in the crowd. 

“These bull-fights are hell on one,” Brett said. “I’m limp as a rag.” 

“Oh, you’ll get a drink,” Mike said. 

The next day Pedro Romero did not fight. It was Miura bulls, and a very bad bull-fight. The next day there was 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. You could not see the tops of the mountains. The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the houses were changed. I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather. The bad weather was coming over the mountains from the sea. 

The flags in the square hung wet from the white poles and the banners were wet and hung damp against the front of the houses, and in between the steady drizzle the rain came down and drove every one under the arcades and made pools of water in the square, and the streets wet and dark and deserted; yet the fiesta kept up without any pause. It was only driven under cover. 

The covered seats of the bull-ring had been crowded with people sitting out of the rain watching the concourse of Basque and Navarrais dancers and singers, and afterward the Val Carlos dancers in their costumes danced down the street in the rain, the drums sounding hollow and damp, and the chiefs of the bands riding ahead on their big, heavy-footed horses, their costumes wet, the horses’ coats wet in the rain. The crowd was in the cafés and the dancers came in, too, and sat, their tight-wound white legs under the tables, shaking the water from their belled caps, and spreading their red and purple jackets over the chairs to dry. It was raining hard outside. 

I left the crowd in the café and went over to the hotel to get shaved for dinner. I was shaving in my room when there was a knock on the door. 

“Come in,” I called. 

Montoya walked in. 

“How are you?” he said. 

“Fine,” I said. 

“No bulls to-day.” 

“No,” I said, “nothing but rain.” 

“Where are your friends?” 

“Over at the Iruña.” 

Montoya smiled his embarrassed smile. 

“Look,” he said. “Do you know the American ambassador?” 

“Yes,” I said. “Everybody knows the American ambassador.” 

“He’s here in town, now.” 

“Yes,” I said. “Everybody’s seen them.” 

“I’ve seen them, too,” Montoya said. He didn’t say anything. I went on shaving.

“Sit down,” I said. “Let me send for a drink.” 

“No, I have to go.” 

I finished shaving and put my face down into the bowl and washed it with cold water. Montoya was standing there looking more embarrassed. 

“Look,” he said. “I’ve just had a message from them at the Grand Hotel that they want Pedro Romero and Marcial Lalanda to come over for coffee to-night after dinner.” 

“Well,” I said, “it can’t hurt Marcial any.” 

“Marcial has been in San Sebastian all day. He drove over in a car this morning with Marquez. I don’t think they’ll be back to-night.” 

Montoya stood embarrassed. He wanted me to say something. 

“Don’t give Romero the message,” I said. 

“You think so?” 

“Absolutely.” 

Montoya was very pleased. 

“I wanted to ask you because you were an American,” he said. 

“That’s what I’d do.” 

“Look,” said Montoya. “People take a boy like that. They don’t know what he’s worth. They don’t know what he means. Any foreigner can flatter him. They start this Grand Hotel business, and in one year they’re through.” 

“Like Algabeno,” I said. 

“Yes, like Algabeno.” 

“They’re a fine lot,” I said. “There’s one American woman down here now that collects bull-fighters.” 

“I know. They only want the young ones.” 

“Yes,” I said. “The old ones get fat.” 

“Or crazy like Gallo.” 

“Well,” I said, “it’s easy. All you have to do is not give him the message.” 

“He’s such a fine boy,” said Montoya. “He ought to stay with his own people. He shouldn’t mix in that stuff.” 

“Won’t you have a drink?” I asked. 

“No,” said Montoya, “I have to go.” He went out. 

I went down-stairs and out the door and took a walk around through the arcades around the square. It was still raining. I looked in at the Iruña for the gang and they were not there, so I walked on around the square and back to the hotel. They were eating dinner in the down-stairs dining-room. 

They were well ahead of me and it was no use trying to catch them. Bill was buying shoe-shines for Mike. Bootblacks opened the street door and each one Bill called over and started to work on Mike. 

“This is the eleventh time my boots have been polished,” Mike said. “I say, Bill is an ass.” 

The bootblacks had evidently spread the report. Another came in. 

“Limpia botas?” he said to Bill. 

“No,” said Bill. “For this Señor.” 

The bootblack knelt down beside the one at work and started on Mike’s free shoe that shone already in the electric light. 

“Bill’s a yell of laughter,” Mike said. 

I was drinking red wine, and so far behind them that I felt a little uncomfortable about all this shoe-shining. I looked around the room. At the next table was Pedro Romero. He stood up when I nodded, and asked me to come over and meet a friend. His table was beside ours, almost touching. I met the friend, a Madrid bull-fight critic, a little man with a drawn face. I told Romero how much I liked his work, and he was very pleased. We talked Spanish and the critic knew a little French. I reached to our table for my wine-bottle, but the critic took my arm. Romero laughed. 

“Drink here,” he said in English. 

He was very bashful about his English, but he was really very pleased with it, and as we went on talking he brought out words he was not sure of, and asked me about them. He was anxious to know the English for _Corrida de toros_, the exact translation. Bull-fight he was suspicious of. I explained that bull-fight in Spanish was the _lidia_ of a _toro_. The Spanish word _corrida_ means in English the running of bulls—the French translation is _Course de taureaux_. The critic put that in. There is no Spanish word for bull-fight. 

Pedro Romero said he had learned a little English in Gibraltar. He was born in Ronda. That is not far above Gibraltar. He started bull-fighting in Malaga in the bull-fighting school there. He had only been at it three years. The bull-fight critic joked him about the number of _Malagueño_ expressions he used. He was nineteen years old, he said. His older brother was with him as a banderillero, but he did not live in this hotel. He lived in a smaller hotel with the other people who worked for Romero. He asked me how many times I had seen him in the ring. I told him only three. It was really only two, but I did not want to explain after I had made the mistake. 

“Where did you see me the other time? In Madrid?” 

“Yes,” I lied. I had read the accounts of his two appearances in Madrid in the bull-fight papers, so I was all right. 

“The first or the second time?” 

“The first.” 

“I was very bad,” he said. “The second time I was better. You remember?” He turned to the critic. 

He was not at all embarrassed. He talked of his work as something altogether apart from himself. There was nothing conceited or braggartly 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.” 

When he said this he smiled, anxious that neither the bull-fight critic nor I would think he was boasting. 

“I am anxious to see it,” the critic said. “I would like to be convinced.”

“He doesn’t like my work much.” Romero turned to me. He was serious. 

The critic explained that he liked it very much, but that so far it had been incomplete. 

“Wait till to-morrow, if a good one comes out.” 

“Have you seen the bulls for to-morrow?” the critic asked me. 

“Yes. I saw them unloaded.” 

Pedro Romero leaned forward. 

“What did you think of them?” 

“Very nice,” I said. “About twenty-six arrobas. Very short horns. Haven’t you seen them?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Romero. 

“They won’t weigh twenty-six arrobas,” said the critic. 

“No,” said Romero. 

“They’ve got bananas for horns,” the critic said. 

“You call them bananas?” asked Romero. He turned to me and smiled. “_You_ wouldn’t call them bananas?” 

“No,” I said. “They’re horns all right.”

“They’re very short,” said Pedro Romero. “Very, very short. Still, they aren’t bananas.” 

“I say, Jake,” Brett called from the next table, “you _have_ deserted us.” 

“Just temporarily,” I said. “We’re talking bulls.” 

“You _are_ superior.” 

“Tell him that bulls have no balls,” Mike shouted. He was drunk. 

Romero looked at me inquiringly. 

“Drunk,” I said. “Borracho! Muy borracho!” 

“You might introduce your friends,” Brett said. She had not stopped looking at Pedro Romero. I asked them if they would like to have coffee with us. They both stood up. Romero’s face was very brown. He had very nice manners. 

I introduced them all around and they started to sit down, but there was not enough room, so we all moved over to the big table by the wall to have coffee. Mike ordered a bottle of Fundador and glasses for everybody. There was a lot of drunken talking. 

“Tell him I think writing is lousy,” Bill said. “Go on, tell him. Tell him I’m ashamed of being a writer.” 

Pedro Romero was sitting beside Brett and listening to her. 

“Go on. Tell him!” Bill said. 

Romero looked up smiling. 

“This gentleman,” I said, “is a writer.” 

Romero was impressed. “This other one, too,” I said, pointing at Cohn. 

“He looks like Villalta,” Romero said, looking at Bill. “Rafael, doesn’t he look like Villalta?” 

“I can’t see it,” the critic said. 

“Really,” Romero said in Spanish. “He looks a lot like Villalta. What does the drunken one do?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Is that why he drinks?” 

“No. He’s waiting to marry this lady.” 

“Tell him bulls have no balls!” Mike shouted, very drunk, from the other end of the table. 

“What does he say?” 

“He’s drunk.” 

“Jake,” Mike called. “Tell him bulls have no balls!” 

“You understand?” I said. 

“Yes.” 

I was sure he didn’t, so it was all right. 

“Tell him Brett wants to see him put on those green pants.” 

“Pipe down, Mike.” 

“Tell him Brett is dying to know how he can get into those pants.” 

“Pipe down.” 

During this Romero was fingering his glass and talking with Brett. Brett was talking French and he was talking Spanish and a little English, and laughing. 

Bill was filling the glasses. 

“Tell him Brett wants to come into——” 

“Oh, pipe down, Mike, for Christ’s sake!” 

Romero looked up smiling. “Pipe down! I know that,” he said. 

Just then Montoya came into the room. He started to smile at me, then he saw Pedro Romero with a big glass of cognac in his hand, sitting laughing between me and a woman with bare shoulders, at a table full of drunks. He did not even nod. 

Montoya went out of the room. Mike was on his feet proposing a toast. “Let’s all drink to—” he began. “Pedro Romero,” I said. Everybody stood up. Romero took it very seriously, and we touched glasses and drank it down, I rushing it a little because Mike was trying to make it clear that that was not at all what he was going to drink to. But it went off all right, and Pedro Romero shook hands with every one and he and the critic went out together. 

“My God! he’s a lovely boy,” Brett said. “And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn.” 

“I started to tell him,” Mike began. “And Jake kept interrupting me. Why do you interrupt me? Do you think you talk Spanish better than I do?” 

“Oh, shut up, Mike! Nobody interrupted you.” 

“No, I’d like to get this settled.” He turned away from me. “Do you think you amount to something, Cohn? Do you think you belong here among us? People who are out to have a good time? For God’s sake don’t be so noisy, Cohn!” 

“Oh, cut it out, Mike,” Cohn said. 

“Do you think Brett wants you here? Do you think you add to the party? Why don’t you say something?” 

“I said all I had to say the other night, Mike.” 

“I’m not one of you literary chaps.” Mike stood shakily and leaned against the table. “I’m not clever. But I do know when I’m not wanted. Why don’t you see when you’re not wanted, Cohn? Go away. Go away, for God’s sake. Take that sad Jewish face away. Don’t you think I’m right?” 

He looked at us. 

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s all go over to the Iruña.” 

“No. Don’t you think I’m right? I love that woman.” 

“Oh, don’t start that again. Do shove it along, Michael,” Brett said. 

“Don’t you think I’m right, Jake?” 

Cohn still sat at the table. His face had the sallow, yellow look it got when he was insulted, but somehow he seemed to be enjoying it. The childish, drunken heroics of it. It was his affair with a lady of title. 

“Jake,” Mike said. He was almost crying. “You know I’m right. Listen, you!” He turned to Cohn: “Go away! Go away now!” 

“But I won’t go, Mike,” said Cohn. 

“Then I’ll make you!” Mike started toward him around the table. Cohn stood up and took off his glasses. He stood waiting, his face sallow, his hands fairly low, proudly and firmly waiting for the assault, ready to do battle for his lady love. 

I grabbed Mike. “Come on to the café,” I said. “You can’t hit him here in the hotel.” 

“Good!” said Mike. “Good idea!” 

We started off. I looked back as Mike stumbled up the stairs and saw Cohn putting his glasses on again. Bill was sitting at the table pouring another glass of Fundador. Brett was sitting looking straight ahead at nothing. 

Outside on the square it had stopped raining and the moon was trying to get through the clouds. There was a wind blowing. The military band was playing and the crowd was massed on the far side of the square where the fireworks specialist and his son were trying to send up fire balloons. A balloon would start up jerkily, on a great bias, and be torn by the wind or blown against the houses of the square. Some fell into the crowd. The magnesium flared and the fireworks exploded and chased about in the crowd. There was no one dancing in the square. The gravel was too wet. 

Brett came out with Bill and joined us. We stood in the crowd and watched Don Manuel Orquito, the fireworks king, standing on a little platform, carefully starting the balloons with sticks, standing above the heads of the crowd to launch the balloons off into the wind. The wind brought them all down, and Don Manuel Orquito’s face was sweaty in the light of his complicated fireworks that fell into the crowd and charged and chased, sputtering and cracking, between the legs of the people. The people shouted as each new luminous paper bubble careened, caught fire, and fell. 

“They’re razzing Don Manuel,” Bill said. 

“How do you know he’s Don Manuel?” Brett said.

“His name’s on the programme. Don Manuel Orquito, the pirotecnico of esta ciudad.” 

“Globos illuminados,” Mike said. “A collection of globos illuminados. That’s what the paper said.” 

The wind blew the band music away. 

“I say, I wish one would go up,” Brett said. “That Don Manuel chap is furious.” 

“He’s probably worked for weeks fixing them to go off, spelling out ‘Hail to San Fermin,’” Bill said. 

“Globos illuminados,” Mike said. “A bunch of bloody globos illuminados.” 

“Come on,” said Brett. “We can’t stand here.” 

“Her ladyship wants a drink,” Mike said. 

“How you know things,” Brett said. 

Inside, the café was crowded and very noisy. No one noticed us come in. We could not find a table. There was a great noise going on. 

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Bill said. 

Outside the paseo was going in under the arcade. There were some English and Americans from Biarritz in sport clothes scattered at the tables. Some of the women stared at the people going by with lorgnons. We had acquired, at some time, a friend of Bill’s from Biarritz. She was staying with another girl at the Grand Hotel. The other girl had a headache and had gone to bed. 

“Here’s the pub,” Mike said. It was the Bar Milano, a small, tough bar where you could get food and where they danced in the back room. We all sat down at a table and ordered a bottle of Fundador. The bar was not full. There was nothing going on. 

“This is a hell of a place,” Bill said. 

“It’s too early.” 

“Let’s take the bottle and come back later,” Bill said. “I don’t want to sit here on a night like this.” 

“Let’s go and look at the English,” Mike said. “I love to look at the English.” 

“They’re awful,” Bill said. “Where did they all come from?” 

“They come from Biarritz,” Mike said, “They come to see the last day of the quaint little Spanish fiesta.” 

“I’ll festa them,” Bill said. 

“You’re an extraordinarily beautiful girl.” Mike turned to Bill’s friend. “When did you come here?” 

“Come off it, Michael.” 

“I say, she _is_ a lovely girl. Where have I been? Where have I been looking all this while? You’re a lovely thing. _Have_ we met? Come along with me and Bill. We’re going to festa the English.” 

“I’ll festa them,” Bill said, “What the hell are they doing at this fiesta?” 

“Come on,” Mike said. “Just us three. We’re going to festa the bloody English. I hope you’re not English? I’m Scotch. I hate the English. I’m going to festa them. Come on, Bill.” 

Through the window we saw them, all three arm in arm, going toward the café. Rockets were going up in the square. 

“I’m going to sit here,” Brett said. 

“I’ll stay with you,” Cohn said. 

“Oh, don’t!” Brett said. “For God’s sake, go off somewhere. Can’t you see Jake and I want to talk?” 

“I didn’t,” Cohn said. “I thought I’d sit here because I felt a little tight.” 

“What a hell of a reason for sitting with any one. If you’re tight, go to bed. Go on to bed.”

“Was I rude enough to him?” Brett asked. Cohn was gone. “My God! I’m so sick of him!” 

“He doesn’t add much to the gayety.” 

“He depresses me so.” 

“He’s behaved very badly.” 

“Damned badly. He had a chance to behave so well.” 

“He’s probably waiting just outside the door now.” 

“Yes. He would. You know I do know how he feels. He can’t believe it didn’t mean anything.” 

“I know.” 

“Nobody else would behave as badly. Oh, I’m so sick of the whole thing. And Michael. Michael’s been lovely, too.” 

“It’s been damned hard on Mike.” 

“Yes. But he didn’t need to be a swine.” 

“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,” I said. 

“Darling, don’t let’s talk a lot of rot.” 

“All right. Talk about anything you like.” 

“Don’t be difficult. You’re the only person I’ve got, and I feel rather awful to-night.” 

“You’ve got Mike.” 

“Yes, Mike. Hasn’t he been pretty?” 

“Well,” I said, “it’s been damned hard on Mike, having Cohn around and seeing him with you.” 

“Don’t I know it, darling? Please don’t make me feel any worse than I do.” 

Brett was nervous as I had never seen her before. She kept looking away from me and looking ahead at the wall. 

“Want to go for a walk?” 

“Yes. Come on.” 

I corked up the Fundador bottle and gave it to the bartender. 

“Let’s have one more drink of that,” Brett said. “My nerves are rotten.” 

We each drank a glass of the smooth amontillado brandy. 

“Come on,” said Brett. 

As we came out the door I saw Cohn walk out from under the arcade. 

“He _was_ there,” Brett said. 

“He can’t be away from you.” 

“Poor devil!” 

“I’m not sorry for him. I hate him, myself.” 

“I hate him, too,” she shivered. “I hate his damned suffering.” 

We walked arm in arm down the side street away from the crowd and the lights of the square. The street was dark and wet, and we walked along it to the fortifications at the edge of town. We passed wine-shops with light coming out from their doors onto the black, wet street, and sudden bursts of music. 

“Want to go in?” 

“No.” 

We walked out across the wet grass and onto the stone wall of the fortifications. I spread a newspaper on the stone and Brett sat down. Across the plain it was dark, and we could see the mountains. The wind was high up and took the clouds across the moon. Below us were the dark pits of the fortifications. Behind were the trees and the shadow of the cathedral, and the town silhouetted against the moon. 

“Don’t feel bad,” I said. 

“I feel like hell,” Brett said. “Don’t let’s talk.” 

We looked out at the plain. The long lines of trees were dark in the moonlight. There were the lights of a car on the road climbing the mountain. Up on the top of the mountain we saw the lights of the fort. Below to the left was the river. It was high from the rain, and black and smooth. Trees were dark along the banks. We sat and looked out. Brett stared straight ahead. Suddenly she shivered. 

“It’s cold.” 

“Want to walk back?” 

“Through the park.” 

We climbed down. It was clouding over again. In the park it was dark under the trees. 

“Do you still love me, Jake?” 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Because I’m a goner,” Brett said. 

“How?” 

“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’m a goner. It’s tearing me all up inside.” 

“Don’t do it.” 

“I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help anything.” 

“You ought to stop it.” 

“How can I stop it? I can’t stop things. Feel that?” 

Her hand was trembling. 

“I’m like that all through.” 

“You oughtn’t to do it.” 

“I can’t help it. I’m a goner now, anyway. Don’t you see the difference?” 

“No.” 

“I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do something I really want to do. I’ve lost my self-respect.” 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“Oh, darling, don’t be difficult. What do you think it’s meant to have that damned Jew about, and Mike the way he’s acted?” 

“Sure.” 

“I can’t just stay tight all the time.” 

“No.” 

“Oh, darling, please stay by me. Please stay by me and see me through this.” 

“Sure.” 

“I don’t say it’s right. It is right though for me. God knows, I’ve never felt such a bitch.” 

“What do you want me to do?” 

“Come on,” Brett said. “Let’s go and find him.” 

Together we walked down the gravel path in the park in the dark, under the trees and then out from under the trees and past the gate into the street that led into town. 

Pedro Romero was in the café. He was at a table with other bull-fighters and bull-fight critics. They were smoking cigars. When we came in they looked up. Romero smiled and bowed. We sat down at a table half-way down the room. 

“Ask him to come over and have a drink.” 

“Not yet. He’ll come over.” 

“I can’t look at him.” 

“He’s nice to look at,” I said. 

“I’ve always done just what I wanted.” 

“I know.” 

“I do feel such a bitch.” 

“Well,” I said. 

“My God!” said Brett, “the things a woman goes through.” 

“Yes?” 

“Oh, I do feel such a bitch.” 

I looked across at the table. Pedro Romero smiled. He said something to the other people at his table, and stood up. He came over to our table. I stood up and we shook hands. 

“Won’t you have a drink?” 

“You must have a drink with me,” he said. He seated himself, asking Brett’s permission without saying anything. He had very nice manners. But he kept on smoking his cigar. It went well with his face. 

“You like cigars?” I asked. 

“Oh, yes. I always smoke cigars.” 

It was part of his system of authority. It made him seem older. I noticed his skin. It was clear and smooth and very brown. There was a triangular scar on his cheek-bone. I saw he was watching Brett. He felt there was something between them. He must have felt it when Brett gave him her hand. He was being very careful. I think he was sure, but he did not want to make any mistake. 

“You fight to-morrow?” I said. 

“Yes,” he said. “Algabeno was hurt to-day in Madrid. Did you hear?” 

“No,” I said. “Badly?” 

He shook his head. 

“Nothing. Here,” he showed his hand. Brett reached out and spread the fingers apart. 

“Oh!” he said in English, “you tell fortunes?” 

“Sometimes. Do you mind?” 

“No. I like it.” He spread his hand flat on the table. “Tell me I live for always, and be a millionaire.” 

He was still very polite, but he was surer of himself. “Look,” he said, “do you see any bulls in my hand?” 

He laughed. His hand was very fine and the wrist was small. 

“There are thousands of bulls,” Brett said. She was not at all nervous now. She looked lovely. 

“Good,” Romero laughed. “At a thousand duros apiece,” he said to me in Spanish. “Tell me some more.” 

“It’s a good hand,” Brett said. “I think he’ll live a long time.” 

“Say it to me. Not to your friend.” 

“I said you’d live a long time.” 

“I know it,” Romero said. “I’m never going to die.” 

I tapped with my finger-tips on the table. Romero saw it. He shook his head. 

“No. Don’t do that. The bulls are my best friends.” 

I translated to Brett. 

“You kill your friends?” she asked. 

“Always,” he said in English, and laughed. “So they don’t kill me.” He looked at her across the table. 

“You know English well.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Pretty well, sometimes. But I must not let anybody know. It would be very bad, a torero who speaks English.” 

“Why?” asked Brett. 

“It would be bad. The people would not like it. Not yet.” 

“Why not?” 

“They would not like it. Bull-fighters are not like that.” 

“What are bull-fighters like?” 

He laughed and tipped his hat down over his eyes and changed the angle of his cigar and the expression of his face. 

“Like at the table,” he said. I glanced over. He had mimicked exactly the expression of Nacional. He smiled, his face natural again. “No. I must forget English.” 

“Don’t forget it, yet,” Brett said. 

“No?” 

“No.” 

“All right.” 

He laughed again. 

“I would like a hat like that,” Brett said. 

“Good. I’ll get you one.” 

“Right. See that you do.” 

“I will. I’ll get you one to-night.”

I stood up. Romero rose, too. 

“Sit down,” I said. “I must go and find our friends and bring them here.” 

He looked at me. It was a final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood all right. 

“Sit down,” Brett said to him. “You must teach me Spanish.” 

He sat down and looked at her across the table. I went out. The hard-eyed people at the bull-fighter table watched me go. It was not pleasant. When I came back and looked in the café, twenty minutes later, Brett and Pedro Romero were gone. The coffee-glasses and our three empty cognac-glasses were on the table. A waiter came with a cloth and picked up the glasses and mopped off the table. 

 

CHAPTER 17 

Outside the Bar Milano I found Bill and Mike and Edna. Edna was the girl’s name. 

“We’ve been thrown out,” Edna said. 

“By the police,” said Mike. “There’s some people in there that don’t like me.” 

“I’ve kept them out of four fights,” Edna said. “You’ve got to help me.” 

Bill’s face was red. 

“Come back in, Edna,” he said. “Go on in there and dance with Mike.” 

“It’s silly,” Edna said. “There’ll just be another row.” 

“Damned Biarritz swine,” Bill said. 

“Come on,” Mike said. “After all, it’s a pub. They can’t occupy a whole pub.” 

“Good old Mike,” Bill said. “Damned English swine come here and insult Mike and try and spoil the fiesta.” 

“They’re so bloody,” Mike said. “I hate the English.” 

“They can’t insult Mike,” Bill said. “Mike is a swell fellow. They can’t insult Mike. I won’t stand it. Who cares if he is a damn bankrupt?” His voice broke. 

“Who cares?” Mike said. “I don’t care. Jake doesn’t care. Do _you_ care?” 

“No,” Edna said. “Are you a bankrupt?” 

“Of course I am. You don’t care, do you, Bill?” 

Bill put his arm around Mike’s shoulder. 

“I wish to hell I was a bankrupt. I’d show those bastards.” 

“They’re just English,” Mike said. “It never makes any difference what the English say.” 

“The dirty swine,” Bill said. “I’m going to clean them out.” 

“Bill,” Edna looked at me. “Please don’t go in again, Bill. They’re so stupid.” 

“That’s it,” said Mike. “They’re stupid. I knew that was what it was.” 

“They can’t say things like that about Mike,” Bill said. 

“Do you know them?” I asked Mike. 

“No. I never saw them. They say they know me.” 

“I won’t stand it,” Bill said. 

“Come on. Let’s go over to the Suizo,” I said. 

“They’re a bunch of Edna’s friends from Biarritz,” Bill said. 

“They’re simply stupid,” Edna said. 

“One of them’s Charley Blackman, from Chicago,” Bill said. 

“I was never in Chicago,” Mike said. 

Edna started to laugh and could not stop. 

“Take me away from here,” she said, “you bankrupts.” 

“What kind of a row was it?” I asked Edna. We were walking across the square to the Suizo. Bill was gone. 

“I don’t know what happened, but some one had the police called to keep Mike out of the back room. There were some people that had known Mike at Cannes. What’s the matter with Mike?” 

“Probably he owes them money” I said. “That’s what people usually get bitter about.” 

In front of the ticket-booths out in the square there were two lines of people waiting. They were sitting on chairs or crouched on the ground with blankets and newspapers around them. They were waiting for the wickets to open in the morning to buy tickets for the bull-fight. The night was clearing and the moon was out. Some of the people in the line were sleeping.

 At the Café Suizo we had just sat down and ordered Fundador when Robert Cohn came up. 

“Where’s Brett?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” 

“She was with you.” 

“She must have gone to bed.” 

“She’s not.” 

“I don’t know where she is.” 

His face was sallow under the light. He was standing up. 

“Tell me where she is.” 

“Sit down,” I said. “I don’t know where she is.” 

“The hell you don’t!” 

“You can shut your face.” 

“Tell me where Brett is.” 

“I’ll not tell you a damn thing.” 

“You know where she is.” 

“If I did I wouldn’t tell you.” 

“Oh, go to hell, Cohn,” Mike called from the table. “Brett’s gone off with the bull-fighter chap. They’re on their honeymoon.” 

“You shut up.” 

“Oh, go to hell!” Mike said languidly. 

“Is that where she is?” Cohn turned to me. 

“Go to hell!” 

“She was with you. Is that where she is?” 

“Go to hell!” 

“I’ll make you tell me”—he stepped forward—“you damned pimp.” 

I swung at him and he ducked. I saw his face duck sideways in the light. He hit me and I sat down on the pavement. As I started to get on my feet he hit me twice. I went down backward under a table. I tried to get up and felt I did not have any legs. I felt I must get on my feet and try and hit him. Mike helped me up. Some one poured a carafe of water on my head. Mike had an arm around me, and I found I was sitting on a chair. Mike was pulling at my ears. 

“I say, you were cold,” Mike said. 

“Where the hell were you?” 

“Oh, I was around.” 

“You didn’t want to mix in it?” 

“He knocked Mike down, too,” Edna said. 

“He didn’t knock me out,” Mike said. “I just lay there.” 

“Does this happen every night at your fiestas?” Edna asked. “Wasn’t that Mr. Cohn?” 

“I’m all right,” I said. “My head’s a little wobbly.” 

There were several waiters and a crowd of people standing around. 

“Vaya!” said Mike. “Get away. Go on.” 

The waiters moved the people away. 

“It was quite a thing to watch,” Edna said. “He must be a boxer.” 

“He is.” 

“I wish Bill had been here,” Edna said. “I’d like to have seen Bill knocked down, too. I’ve always wanted to see Bill knocked down. He’s so big.” 

“I was hoping he would knock down a waiter,” Mike said, “and get arrested. I’d like to see Mr. Robert Cohn in jail.” 

“No,” I said. 

“Oh, no,” said Edna. “You don’t mean that.” 

“I do, though,” Mike said. “I’m not one of these chaps likes being knocked about. I never play games, even.” 

Mike took a drink. 

“I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you. How do you feel, Jake?” 

“All right.” 

“You’re nice,” Edna said to Mike. “Are you really a bankrupt?” 

“I’m a tremendous bankrupt,” Mike said. “I owe money to everybody. Don’t you owe any money?” 

“Tons.” 

“I owe everybody money,” Mike said. “I borrowed a hundred pesetas from Montoya to-night.” 

“The hell you did,” I said. 

“I’ll pay it back,” Mike said. “I always pay everything back.” 

“That’s why you’re a bankrupt, isn’t it?” Edna said. 

I stood up. I had heard them talking from a long way away. It all seemed like some bad play. 

“I’m going over to the hotel,” I said. Then I heard them talking about me. 

“Is he all right?” Edna asked. 

“We’d better walk with him.” 

“I’m all right,” I said. “Don’t come. I’ll see you all later.” 

I walked away from the café. They were sitting at the table. I looked back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands. 

Walking across the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre. It was all different. I felt as I felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game. I was carrying a suitcase with my football things in it, and I walked up the street from the station in the town I had lived in all my life and it was all new. They were raking the lawns and burning leaves in the road, and I stopped for a long time and watched. It was all strange. Then I went on, and my feet seemed to be a long way off, and everything seemed to come from a long way off, and I could hear my feet walking a great distance away. I had been kicked in the head early in the game. It was like that crossing the square. It was like that going up the stairs in the hotel. Going up the stairs took a long time, and I had the feeling that I was carrying my suitcase. There was a light in the room. Bill came out and met me in the hall. 

“Say,” he said, “go up and see Cohn. He’s been in a jam, and he’s asking for you.” 

“The hell with him.” 

“Go on. Go on up and see him.” 

I did not want to climb another flight of stairs. 

“What are you looking at me that way for?” 

“I’m not looking at you. Go on up and see Cohn. He’s in bad shape.” 

“You were drunk a little while ago,” I said. 

“I’m drunk now,” Bill said. “But you go up and see Cohn. He wants to see you.” 

“All right,” I said. It was just a matter of climbing more stairs. I went on up the stairs carrying my phantom suitcase. I walked down the hall to Cohn’s room. The door was shut and I knocked. 

“Who is it?” 

“Barnes.” 

“Come in, Jake.” 

I opened the door and went in, and set down my suitcase. There was no light in the room. Cohn was lying, face down, on the bed in the dark. 

“Hello, Jake.” 

“Don’t call me Jake.” 

I stood by the door. It was just like this that I had come home. Now it was a hot bath that I needed. A deep, hot bath, to lie back in. 

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked. 

Cohn was crying. There he was, face down on the bed, 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.” 

“Please forgive me, Jake.” 

I did not say anything. I stood there by the door. 

“I was crazy. You must see how it was.” 

“Oh, that’s all right.” 

“I couldn’t stand it about Brett.” 

“You called me a pimp.” 

I did not care. I wanted a hot bath. I wanted a hot bath in deep water. 

“I know. Please don’t remember it. I was crazy.” 

“That’s all right.” 

He was crying. His voice was funny. He lay there in his white shirt on the bed in the dark. His polo shirt. 

“I’m going away in the morning.” 

He was crying without making any noise. 

“I just couldn’t stand it about Brett. I’ve been through hell, Jake. It’s been simply hell. When I met her down here Brett treated me as though I were a perfect stranger. I just couldn’t stand it. We lived together at San Sebastian. I suppose you know it. I can’t stand it any more.” 

He lay there on the bed. 

“Well,” I said, “I’m going to take a bath.” 

“You were the only friend I had, and I loved Brett so.” 

“Well,” I said, “so long.” 

“I guess it isn’t any use,” he said. “I guess it isn’t any damn use.” 

“What?” 

“Everything. Please say you forgive me, Jake.” 

“Sure,” I said. “It’s all right.” 

“I felt so terribly. I’ve been through such hell, Jake. Now everything’s gone. Everything.” 

“Well,” I said, “so long. I’ve got to go.” 

He rolled over, sat on the edge of the bed, and then stood up. 

“So long, Jake,” he said. “You’ll shake hands, won’t you?” 

“Sure. Why not?” 

We shook hands. In the dark I could not see his face very well. 

“Well,” I said, “see you in the morning.” 

“I’m going away in the morning.” 

“Oh, yes,” I said. 

I went out. Cohn was standing in the door of the room. 

“Are you all right, Jake?” he asked. 

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’m all right.” 

I could not find the bathroom. After a while I found it. There was a deep stone tub. I turned on the taps and the water would not run. I sat down on the edge of the bath-tub. When I got up to go I found I had taken off my shoes. I hunted for them and found them and carried them down-stairs. I found my room and went inside and undressed and got into bed. 

000 

I woke with a headache and the noise of the bands going by in the street. I remembered I had promised to take Bill’s friend Edna to see the bulls go through the street and into the ring. I dressed and went down-stairs and out into the cold early morning. People were crossing the square, hurrying toward the bull-ring. Across the square were the two lines of men in front of the ticket-booths. They were still waiting for the tickets to go on sale at seven o’clock. I hurried across the street to the café. The waiter told me that my friends had been there and gone. 

“How many were they?” 

“Two gentlemen and a lady.” 

That was all right. Bill and Mike were with Edna. She had been afraid last night they would pass out. That was why I was to be sure to take her. I drank the coffee and hurried with the other people toward the bull-ring. I was not groggy now. There was only a bad headache. Everything looked sharp and clear, and the town smelt of the early morning. 

The stretch of ground from the edge of the town to the bull-ring was muddy. There was a crowd all along the fence that led to the ring, and the outside balconies and the top of the bull-ring were solid with people. I heard the rocket and I knew I could not get into the ring in time to see the bulls come in, so I shoved through the crowd to the fence. I was pushed close against the planks of the fence. Between the two fences of the runway the police were clearing the crowd along. They walked or trotted on into the bull-ring. Then people commenced to come running. A drunk slipped and fell. Two policemen grabbed him and rushed him over to the fence. The crowd were running fast now. There was a great shout from the crowd, and putting my head through between the boards I saw the bulls just coming out of the street into the long running pen. They were going fast and gaining on the crowd. Just then another drunk started out from the fence with a blouse in his hands. He wanted to do capework with the bulls. The two policemen tore out, collared him, one hit him with a club, and they dragged him against the fence and stood flattened out against the fence as the last of the crowd and the bulls went by. There were so many people running ahead of the bulls that the mass thickened and slowed up going through the gate into the ring, and as the bulls passed, galloping together, heavy, muddy-sided, horns swinging, one shot ahead, caught a man in the running crowd in the back and lifted him in the air. Both the man’s arms were by his sides, his head went back as the horn went in, and the bull lifted him and then dropped him. The bull picked another man running in front, but the man disappeared into the crowd, and the crowd was through the gate and into the ring with the bulls behind them. The red door of the ring went shut, the crowd on the outside balconies of the bull-ring were pressing through to the inside, there was a shout, then another shout. 

The man who had been gored lay face down in the trampled mud. People climbed over the fence, and I could not see the man because the crowd was so thick around him. From inside the ring came the shouts. Each shout meant a charge by some bull into the crowd. You could tell by the degree of intensity in the shout how bad a thing it was that was happening. Then the rocket went up that meant the steers had gotten the bulls out of the ring and into the corrals. I left the fence and started back toward the town. 

Back in the town I went to the café to have a second coffee and some buttered toast. The waiters were sweeping out the café and mopping off the tables. One came over and took my order. 

“Anything happen at the encierro?” 

“I didn’t see it all. One man was badly cogido.” 

“Where?” 

“Here.” I put one hand on the small of my back and the other on my chest, where it looked as though the horn must have come through. The waiter nodded his head and swept the crumbs from the table with his cloth. 

“Badly cogido,” he said. “All for sport. All for pleasure.” 

He went away and came back with the long-handled coffee and milk pots. He poured the milk and coffee. It came out of the long spouts in two streams into the big cup. The waiter nodded his head. 

“Badly cogido through the back,” he said. He put the pots down on the table and sat down in the chair at the table. “A big horn wound. All for fun. Just for fun. What do you think of that?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“That’s it. All for fun. Fun, you understand.” 

“You’re not an aficionado?” 

“Me? What are bulls? Animals. Brute animals.” He stood up and put his hand on the small of his back. “Right through the back. A cornada right through the back. For fun—you understand.” 

He shook his head and walked away, carrying the coffee-pots. Two men were going by in the street. The waiter shouted to them. They were grave-looking. One shook his head. “Muerto!” he called. 

The waiter nodded his head. The two men went on. They were on some errand. The waiter came over to my table. 

“You hear? Muerto. Dead. He’s dead. With a horn through him. All for morning fun. Es muy flamenco.” 

“It’s bad.” 

“Not for me,” the waiter said. “No fun in that for me.” 

Later in the day we learned that the man who was killed was named Vicente Girones, and came from near Tafalla. The next day in the paper we read that he was twenty-eight years old, and had a farm, a wife, and two children. He had continued to come to the fiesta each year after he was married. The next day his wife came in from Tafalla to be with the body, and the day after there was a service in the chapel of San Fermin, and 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 two children. . . . Behind them marched all the members of the dancing and drinking societies of Pamplona, Estella, Tafalla, and Sanguesa who could stay over for the funeral. The coffin was loaded into the baggage-car of the train, and the widow and the two children rode, sitting, all three together, in an open third-class railway-carriage. The train started with a jerk, and then ran smoothly, going down grade around the edge of the plateau and out into the fields of grain that blew in the wind on the plain on the way to Tafalla. 

The bull who killed Vicente Girones was named Bocanegra, was Number 118 of the bull-breeding establishment of Sanchez Tabemo, and was killed by Pedro Romero as the third bull of that same afternoon. His ear was cut by popular acclamation and given to Pedro Romero, who, in turn, gave it to Brett, who wrapped it in a handkerchief belonging to myself, and left both ear and handkerchief, along with a number of Muratti cigarette-stubs, shoved far back in the drawer of the bed-table that stood beside her bed in the Hotel Montoya, in Pamplona. 

000 

Back in the hotel, the night watchman was sitting on a bench inside the door. He had been there all night and was very sleepy. He stood up as I came in. Three of the waitresses came in at the same time. They had been to the morning show at the bull-ring. They went up-stairs laughing. I followed them up-stairs and went into my room. I took off my shoes and lay down on the bed. The window was open onto the balcony and the sunlight was bright in the room. I did not feel sleepy. It must have been half past three o’clock when I had gone to bed and the bands had waked me at six. My jaw was sore on both sides. I felt it with my thumb and fingers. That damn Cohn. He should have hit somebody the first time he was insulted, and then gone away. He was so sure that Brett loved him. He was going to stay, and true love would conquer all. Some one knocked on the door. 

“Come in.”

 It was Bill and Mike. They sat down on the bed.

 “Some encierro,” Bill said. “Some encierro.”

 “I say, weren’t you there?” Mike asked. “Ring for some beer, Bill.”

 “What a morning!” Bill said. He mopped off his face. “My God! what a morning! And here’s old Jake. Old Jake, the human punching-bag.”

 “What happened inside?” 

“Good God!” Bill said, “what happened, Mike?”

“There were these bulls coming in,” Mike said. “Just ahead of them was the crowd, and some chap tripped and brought the whole lot of them down.” 

“And the bulls all came in right over them,” Bill said. 

“I heard them yell.” 

“That was Edna,” Bill said. 

“Chaps kept coming out and waving their shirts.” 

“One bull went along the barrera and hooked everybody over.” 

“They took about twenty chaps to the infirmary,” Mike said. 

“What a morning!” Bill said. “The damn police kept arresting chaps that wanted to go and commit suicide with the bulls.” 

“The steers took them in, in the end,” Mike said. 

“It took about an hour.” 

“It was really about a quarter of an hour,” Mike objected. 

“Oh, go to hell,” Bill said. “You’ve been in the war. It was two hours and a half for me.” 

“Where’s that beer?” Mike asked.

 “What did you do with the lovely Edna?”

 “We took her home just now. She’s gone to bed.”

 “How did she like it?”

 “Fine. We told her it was just like that every morning.” 

“She was impressed,” Mike said.

“She wanted us to go down in the ring, too,” Bill said. “She likes action.” 

“I said it wouldn’t be fair to my creditors,” Mike said. 

“What a morning,” Bill said. “And what a night!” 

“How’s your jaw, Jake?” Mike asked. 

“Sore,” I said. 

Bill laughed. 

“Why didn’t you hit him with a chair?” 

“You can talk,” Mike said. “He’d have knocked you out, too. I never saw him hit me. I rather think I saw him just before, and then quite suddenly I was sitting down in the street, and Jake was lying under a table.” 

“Where did he go afterward?” I asked. 

“Here she is,” Mike said. “Here’s the beautiful lady with the beer.” 

The chambermaid put the tray with the beer-bottles and glasses down on the table. 

“Now bring up three more bottles,” Mike said. 

“Where did Cohn go after he hit me?” I asked Bill. 

“Don’t you know about that?” Mike was opening a beer-bottle. He poured the beer into one of the glasses, holding the glass close to the bottle. 

“Really?” Bill asked. 

“Why he went in and found Brett and the bull-fighter chap in the bull-fighter’s room, and then he massacred the poor, bloody bull-fighter.” 

“No.” 

“Yes.” 

“What a night!” Bill said. 

“He nearly killed the poor, bloody bull-fighter. Then Cohn wanted to take Brett away. Wanted to make an honest woman of her, I imagine. Damned touching scene.” 

He took a long drink of the beer. 

“He is an ass.” 

“What happened?” 

“Brett gave him what for. She told him off. I think she was rather good.” 

“I’ll bet she was,” Bill said. 

“Then Cohn broke down and cried, and wanted to shake hands with the bull-fighter fellow. He wanted to shake hands with Brett, too.” 

“I know. He shook hands with me.” 

“Did he? Well, they weren’t having any of it. The bull-fighter fellow was rather good. He didn’t say much, but he kept getting up and getting knocked down again. Cohn couldn’t knock him out. It must have been damned funny.” 

“Where did you hear all this?” 

“Brett. I saw her this morning.” 

“What happened finally?” 

“It seems the bull-fighter fellow was sitting on the bed. He’d been knocked down about fifteen times, and he wanted to fight some more. Brett held him and wouldn’t let him get up. He was weak, but Brett couldn’t hold him, and he got up. Then Cohn said he wouldn’t hit him again. Said he couldn’t do it. Said it would be wicked. So the bull-fighter chap sort of rather staggered over to him. Cohn went back against the wall. 

“‘So you won’t hit me?’ 

“‘No,’ said Cohn. ‘I’d be ashamed to.’ 

“So the bull-fighter fellow hit him just as hard as he could in the face, and then sat down on the floor. He couldn’t get up, Brett said. Cohn wanted to pick him up and carry him to the bed. He said if Cohn helped him he’d kill him, and he’d kill him anyway this morning if Cohn wasn’t out of town. Cohn was crying, and Brett had told him off, and he wanted to shake hands. I’ve told you that before.” 

“Tell the rest,” Bill said. 

“It seems the bull-fighter chap was sitting on the floor. He was waiting to get strength enough to get up and hit Cohn again. Brett wasn’t having any shaking hands, and Cohn was crying and telling her how much he loved her, and she was telling him not to be a ruddy ass. Then Cohn leaned down to shake hands with the bull-fighter fellow. No hard feelings, you know. All for forgiveness. And the bull-fighter chap hit him in the face again.” 

“That’s quite a kid,” Bill said. 

“He ruined Cohn,” Mike said. “You know I don’t think Cohn will ever want to knock people about again.” 

“When did you see Brett?” 

“This morning. She came in to get some things. She’s looking after this Romero lad.” 

He poured out another bottle of beer. 

“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.” 

“I know,” I said. 

“I’m rather drunk,” Mike said. “I think I’ll _stay_ rather drunk. This is all awfully amusing, but it’s not too pleasant. It’s not too pleasant for me.” 

He drank off the beer. 

“I gave Brett what for, you know. I said if she would go about with Jews and bull-fighters and such people, she must expect trouble.” He leaned forward. “I say, Jake, do you mind if I drink that bottle of yours? She’ll bring you another one.” 

“Please,” I said. “I wasn’t drinking it, anyway.” 

Mike started to open the bottle. “Would you mind opening it?” I pressed up the wire fastener and poured it for him. 

“You know,” Mike went on, “Brett was rather good. She’s always rather good. I gave her a fearful hiding about Jews and bull-fighters, and all those sort of people, and do you know what she said: ‘Yes. I’ve had such a hell of a happy life with the British aristocracy!’” 

He took a drink. 

“That was rather good. Ashley, chap she got the title from, was a sailor, you know. Ninth baronet. When he came home he wouldn’t sleep in a bed. Always made Brett sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her 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.” 

He stood up. His hand was shaky. 

“I’m going in the room. Try and get a little sleep.” 

He smiled. 

“We go too long without sleep in these fiestas. I’m going to start now and get plenty of sleep. Damn bad thing not to get sleep. Makes you frightfully nervy.” 

“We’ll see you at noon at the Iruña,” Bill said. 

Mike went out the door. We heard him in the next room. 

He rang the bell and the chambermaid came and knocked at the door. 

“Bring up half a dozen bottles of beer and a bottle of Fundador,” Mike told her. 

“Si, Señorito.” 

“I’m going to bed,” Bill said. “Poor old Mike. I had a hell of a row about him last night.” 

“Where? At that Milano place?” 

“Yes. There was a fellow there that had helped pay Brett and Mike out of Cannes, once. He was damned nasty.” 

“I know the story.” 

“I didn’t. Nobody ought to have a right to say things about Mike.” 

“That’s what makes it bad.” 

“They oughtn’t to have any right. I wish to hell they didn’t have any right. I’m going to bed.” 

“Was anybody killed in the ring?” 

“I don’t think so. Just badly hurt.” 

“A man was killed outside in the runway.” 

“Was there?” said Bill.

  

CHAPTER 18

At noon we were all at the café. It was crowded. We were eating shrimps and drinking beer. The town was crowded. Every street was full. Big motor-cars from Biarritz and San Sebastian kept driving up and parking around the square. They brought people for the bull-fight. Sight-seeing cars came up, too. There was one with twenty-five Englishwomen in it. They sat in the big, white car and looked through their glasses at the fiesta. The dancers were all quite drunk. It was the last day of the fiesta. 

The fiesta was solid and unbroken, but the motor-cars and tourist-cars made little islands of onlookers. When the cars emptied, the onlookers were absorbed into the crowd. You did not see them again except as sport clothes, odd-looking at a table among the closely packed peasants in black smocks. The fiesta absorbed even the Biarritz English so that you did not see them unless you passed close to a table. All the time there was music in the street. The drums kept on pounding and the pipes were going. Inside the cafés men with their hands gripping the table, or on each other’s shoulders, were singing the hard-voiced singing. 

“Here comes Brett,” Bill said. 

I looked and saw her coming through the crowd in the square, walking, her head up, as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor, and she found it pleasant and amusing. 

“Hello, you chaps!” she said. “I say, I _have_ a thirst.” 

“Get another big beer,” Bill said to the waiter. 

“Shrimps?” 

“Is Cohn gone?” Brett asked. 

“Yes,” Bill said. “He hired a car.” 

The beer came. Brett started to lift the glass mug and her hand shook. She saw it and smiled, and leaned forward and took a long sip. 

“Good beer.” 

“Very good,” I said. I was nervous about Mike. I did not think he had slept. He must have been drinking all the time, but he seemed to be under control. 

“I heard Cohn had hurt you, Jake,” Brett said. 

“No. Knocked me out. That was all.” 

“I say, he did hurt Pedro Romero,” Brett said. “He hurt him most badly.” 

“How is he?” 

“He’ll be all right. He won’t go out of the room.” 

“Does he look badly?” 

“Very. He was really hurt. I told him I wanted to pop out and see you chaps for a minute.” 

“Is he going to fight?” 

“Rather. I’m going with you, if you don’t mind.” 

“How’s your boy friend?” Mike asked. He had not listened to anything that Brett had said. 

“Brett’s got a bull-fighter,” he said. “She had a Jew named Cohn, but he turned out badly.” 

Brett stood up. 

“I am not going to listen to that sort of rot from you, Michael.” 

“How’s your boy friend?” 

“Damned well,” Brett said. “Watch him this afternoon.” 

“Brett’s got a bull-fighter,” Mike said. “A beautiful, bloody bull-fighter.” 

“Would you mind walking over with me? I want to talk to you, Jake.” 

“Tell him all about your bull-fighter,” Mike said. “Oh, to hell with your bull-fighter!” He tipped the table so that all the beers and the dish of shrimps went over in a crash. 

“Come on,” Brett said. “Let’s get out of this.” 

In the crowd crossing the square I said: “How is it?” 

“I’m not going to see him after lunch until the fight. His people come in and dress him. They’re very angry about me, he says.” 

Brett was radiant. She was happy. The sun was out and the day was bright. 

“I feel altogether changed,” Brett said. “You’ve no idea, Jake.” 

“Anything you want me to do?” 

“No, just go to the fight with me.” 

“We’ll see you at lunch?” 

“No. I’m eating with him.” 

We were standing under the arcade at the door of the hotel. They were carrying tables out and setting them up under the arcade. 

“Want to take a turn out to the park?” Brett asked. “I don’t want to go up yet. I fancy he’s sleeping.” 

We walked along past the theatre and out of the square and along through the barracks of the fair, moving with the crowd between the lines of booths. We came out on a cross-street that led to the Paseo de Sarasate. We could see the crowd walking there, all the fashionably dressed people. They were making the turn at the upper end of the park. 

“Don’t let’s go there,” Brett said. “I don’t want staring at just now.” 

We stood in the sunlight. It was hot and good after the rain and the clouds from the sea. 

“I hope the wind goes down,” Brett said. “It’s very bad for him.” 

“So do I.” 

“He says the bulls are all right.” 

“They’re good.” 

“Is that San Fermin’s?” 

Brett looked at the yellow wall of the chapel. 

“Yes. Where the show started on Sunday.” 

“Let’s go in. Do you mind? I’d rather like to pray a little for him or something.” 

We went in through the heavy leather door that moved very lightly. It was dark inside. Many people were praying. You saw them as your eyes adjusted themselves to the half-light. We knelt at one of the long wooden benches. After a little I felt Brett stiffen beside me, and saw she was looking straight ahead. 

“Come on,” she whispered throatily. “Let’s get out of here. Makes me damned nervous.” 

Outside in the hot brightness of the street Brett looked up at the tree-tops in the wind. The praying had not been much of a success. 

“Don’t know why I get so nervy in church,” Brett said. “Never does me any good.” 

We walked along. 

“I’m damned bad for a religious atmosphere,” Brett said. “I’ve the wrong type of face. 

“You know,” Brett said, “I’m not worried about him at all. I just feel happy about him.” 

“Good.” 

“I wish the wind would drop, though.” 

“It’s liable to go down by five o’clock.” 

“Let’s hope.” 

“You might pray,” I laughed. 

“Never does me any good. I’ve never gotten anything I prayed for. Have you?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“Oh, rot,” said Brett. “Maybe it works for some people, though. You don’t look very religious, Jake.” 

“I’m pretty religious.” 

“Oh, rot,” said Brett. “Don’t start proselyting to-day. To-day’s going to be bad enough as it is.” 

It was the first time I had seen her in the old happy, careless way since before she went off with Cohn. We were back again in front of the hotel. All the tables were set now, and already several were filled with people eating. 

“Do look after Mike,” Brett said. “Don’t let him get too bad.” 

“Your frients haff gone up-stairs,” the German maître d’hôtel said in English. He was a continual eavesdropper. Brett turned to him: 

“Thank you, so much. Have you anything else to say?” 

“No, _ma’am_.” 

“Good,” said Brett. 

“Save us a table for three,” I said to the German. He smiled his dirty little pink-and-white smile. 

“Iss madam eating here?” 

“No,” Brett said. 

“Den I think a tabul for two will be enuff.” 

“Don’t talk to him,” Brett said. “Mike must have been in bad shape,” she said on the stairs. We passed Montoya on the stairs. He bowed and did not smile. 

“I’ll see you at the café,” Brett said. “Thank you, so much, Jake.” 

We had stopped at the floor our rooms were on. She went straight down the hall and into Romero’s room. She did not knock. She simply opened the door, went in, and closed it behind her. 

I stood in front of the door of Mike’s room and knocked. There was no answer. I tried the knob and it opened. Inside the room was in great disorder. All the bags were opened and clothing was strewn around. There were empty bottles beside the bed. Mike lay on the bed looking like a death mask of himself. He opened his eyes and looked at me. 

“Hello, Jake,” he said very slowly. “I’m getting a lit tle sleep. I’ve want ed a lit tle sleep for a long time.” 

“Let me cover you over.” 

“No. I’m quite warm.” 

“Don’t go. I have n’t got ten to sleep yet.” 

“You’ll sleep, Mike. Don’t worry, boy.” 

“Brett’s got a bull-fighter,” Mike said. “But her Jew has gone away.” 

He turned his head and looked at me. 

“Damned good thing, what?” 

“Yes. Now go to sleep, Mike. You ought to get some sleep.” 

“I’m just start ing. I’m go ing to get a lit tle sleep.” 

He shut his eyes. I went out of the room and turned the door to quietly. Bill was in my room reading the paper. 

“See Mike?” 

“Yes.” 

“Let’s go and eat.” 

“I won’t eat down-stairs with that German head waiter. He was damned snotty when I was getting Mike up-stairs.” 

“He was snotty to us, too.” 

“Let’s go out and eat in the town.” 

We went down the stairs. On the stairs we passed a girl coming up with a covered tray. 

“There goes Brett’s lunch,” Bill said. 

“And the kid’s,” I said. 

Outside on the terrace under the arcade the German head waiter came up. His red cheeks were shiny. He was being polite. 

“I haff a tabul for two for you gentlemen,” he said. 

“Go sit at it,” Bill said. We went on out across the street. 

We ate at a restaurant in a side street off the square. They were all men eating in the restaurant. It was full of smoke and drinking and singing. The food was good and so was the wine. We did not talk much. Afterward we went to the café and watched the fiesta come to the boiling-point. Brett came over soon after lunch. She said she had looked in the room and that Mike was asleep. 

When the fiesta boiled over and toward the bull-ring we went with the crowd. Brett sat at the ringside between Bill and me. Directly below us was the callejon, the passageway between the stands and the red fence of the barrera. Behind us the concrete stands filled solidly. Out in front, beyond the red fence, the sand of the ring was smooth-rolled and yellow. It looked a little heavy from the rain, but it was dry in the sun and firm and smooth. The sword-handlers and bull-ring servants came down the callejon carrying on their shoulders the wicker baskets of fighting capes and muletas. They were bloodstained and compactly folded and packed in the baskets. The sword-handlers opened the heavy leather sword-cases so the red wrapped hilts of the sheaf of swords showed as the leather case leaned against the fence. They unfolded the dark-stained red flannel of the muletas and fixed batons in them to spread the stuff and give the matador something to hold. Brett watched it all. She was absorbed in the professional details. 

“He’s his name stencilled on all the capes and muletas,” she said. “Why do they call them muletas?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I wonder if they ever launder them.” 

“I don’t think so. It might spoil the color.” 

“The blood must stiffen them,” Bill said. 

“Funny,” Brett said. “How one doesn’t mind the blood.” 

Below in the narrow passage of the callejon the sword-handlers arranged everything. All the seats were full. Above, all the boxes were full. There was not an empty seat except in the President’s box. When he came in the fight would start. Across the smooth sand, in the high doorway that led into the corrals, the bull-fighters were standing, their arms furled in their capes, talking, waiting for the signal to march in across the arena. Brett was watching them with the glasses. 

“Here, would you like to look?” 

I looked through the glasses and saw the three matadors. Romero was in the centre, Belmonte on his left, Marcial on his right. Back of them were their people, and behind the banderilleros, back in the passageway and in the open space of the corral, I saw the picadors. Romero was wearing a black suit. His tricornered hat was low down over his eyes. I could not see his face clearly under the hat, but it looked badly marked. He was looking straight ahead. Marcial was smoking a cigarette guardedly, holding it in his hand. Belmonte looked ahead, his face wan and yellow, his long wolf jaw out. He was looking at nothing. Neither he nor Romero seemed to have anything in common with the others. They were all alone. The President came in; there was handclapping above us in the grand stand, and I handed the glasses to Brett. There was applause. The music started. Brett looked through the glasses. 

“Here, take them,” she said. 

Through the glasses I saw Belmonte speak to Romero. Marcial straightened up and dropped his cigarette, and, looking straight ahead, their heads back, their free arms swinging, the three matadors walked out. Behind them came all the procession, opening out, all striding in step, all the capes furled, everybody with free arms swinging, and behind rode the picadors, their pics rising like lances. Behind all came the two trains of mules and the bull-ring servants. The matadors bowed, holding their hats on, before the President’s box, and then came over to the barrera below us. Pedro Romero took off his heavy gold-brocaded cape and handed it over the fence to his sword-handler. He said something to the sword-handler. Close below us we saw Romero’s lips were puffed, both eyes were discolored. His face was discolored and swollen. The sword-handler took the cape, looked up at Brett, and came over to us and handed up the cape. 

“Spread it out in front of you,” I said. 

Brett leaned forward. The cape was heavy and smoothly stiff with gold. The sword-handler looked back, shook his head, and said something. A man beside me leaned over toward Brett. 

“He doesn’t want you to spread it,” he said. “You should fold it and keep it in your lap.” 

Brett folded the heavy cape. 

Romero did not look up at us. He was speaking to Belmonte. Belmonte had sent his formal cape over to some friends. He looked across at them and smiled, his wolf smile that was only with the mouth. Romero leaned over the barrera and asked for the water-jug. The sword-handler brought it and Romero poured water over the percale of his fighting-cape, and then scuffed the lower folds in the sand with his slippered foot. 

“What’s that for?” Brett asked. 

“To give it weight in the wind.” 

“His face looks bad,” Bill said. 

“He feels very badly,” Brett said. “He should be in bed.” 

The first bull was Belmonte’s. Belmonte was very good. But because he got thirty thousand pesetas and people had stayed in line all night to buy tickets to see him, the crowd demanded that he should be more than very good. Belmonte’s great attraction is working close to the bull. In bull-fighting they speak of the terrain of the bull and the terrain of the bull-fighter. As long as a bull-fighter stays in his own terrain he is comparatively safe. Each time he enters into the terrain of the bull he is in great danger. Belmonte, in his best days, worked always in the terrain of the bull. This way he gave the sensation of coming tragedy. People went to the corrida to see Belmonte, to be given tragic sensations, and perhaps to see the death of Belmonte. Fifteen years ago they said if you wanted to see Belmonte you should go quickly, while he was still alive. Since then he has killed more than a thousand bulls. When he retired the legend grew up about how his bull-fighting had been, and when he came out of retirement the public were disappointed because no real man could work as close to the bulls as Belmonte was supposed to have done, not, of course, even Belmonte. 

Also Belmonte imposed conditions and insisted that his bulls should not be too large, nor too dangerously armed with horns, and so the element that was necessary to give the sensation of tragedy was not there, and the public, who wanted three times as much from Belmonte, who was sick with a fistula, as Belmonte had ever been able to give, felt defrauded and cheated, and Belmonte’s jaw came further out in contempt, and his face turned yellower, and he moved with greater difficulty as his pain increased, and finally the crowd were actively against him, and he was utterly contemptuous and indifferent. He had meant to have a great afternoon, and instead it was an afternoon of sneers, shouted insults, and finally a volley of cushions and pieces of bread and vegetables, thrown down at him in the plaza where he had had his greatest triumphs. His jaw only went further out. Sometimes he turned to smile that toothed, long-jawed, lipless smile when he was called something particularly insulting, and always the pain that any movement produced grew stronger and stronger, until finally his yellow face was parchment color, and after his second bull was dead and the throwing of bread and cushions was over, after he had saluted the President with the same wolf-jawed smile and contemptuous eyes, and handed his sword over the barrera to be wiped, and put back in its case, he passed through into the callejon and leaned on the barrera below us, his head on his arms, not seeing, not hearing anything, only going through his pain. When he looked up, finally, he asked for a drink of water. He swallowed a little, rinsed his mouth, spat the water, took his cape, and went back into the ring. 

Because they were against Belmonte the public were for Romero. From the moment he left the barrera and went toward the bull they applauded him. Belmonte watched Romero, too, watched him always without seeming to. He paid no attention to Marcial. Marcial was the sort of thing he knew all about. He had come out of retirement to compete with Marcial, knowing it was a competition gained in advance. He had expected to compete with Marcial and the other stars of the decadence of bull-fighting, and he knew that the sincerity of his own bull-fighting would be so set off by the false æsthetics of the bull-fighters of the decadent period that he would only have to be in the ring. His return from retirement had been spoiled by Romero. Romero did always, smoothly, calmly, and beautifully, what he, Belmonte, could only bring himself to do now sometimes. The crowd felt it, even the people from Biarritz, even the American ambassador saw it, finally. It was a competition that Belmonte would not enter because it would lead only to a bad horn wound or death. Belmonte was no longer well enough. He no longer had his greatest moments in the bull-ring. He was not sure that there were any great moments. Things were not the same and now life only came in flashes. He had flashes of the old greatness with his bulls, but they were not of value because he had discounted them in advance when he had picked the bulls out for their safety, getting out of a motor and leaning on a fence, looking over at the herd on the ranch of his friend the bull-breeder. So he had two small, manageable bulls without much horns, and when he felt the greatness again coming, just a little of it through the pain that was always with him, it had been discounted and sold in advance, and it did not give him a good feeling. It was the greatness, but it did not make bull-fighting wonderful to him any more. 

Pedro Romero had the greatness. He loved bull-fighting, and I think he loved the bulls, and I think he loved Brett. Everything of which he could control the locality he did in front of her all that afternoon. Never once did he look up. He made it stronger that way, and did it for himself, too, as well as for her. Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside, and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too. But he did not do it for her at any loss to himself. He gained by it all through the afternoon. 

His first “quite” was directly below us. The three matadors take the bull in turn after each charge he makes at a picador. Belmonte was the first. Marcial was the second. Then came Romero. The three of them were standing at the left of the horse. The picador, his hat down over his eyes, the shaft of his pic angling sharply toward the bull, kicked in the spurs and held them and with the reins in his left hand walked the horse forward toward the bull. The bull was watching. Seemingly he watched the white horse, but really he watched the triangular steel point of the pic. Romero, watching, saw the bull start to turn his head. He did not want to charge. Romero flicked his cape so the color caught the bull’s eye. The bull charged with the reflex, charged, and found not the flash of color but a white horse, and a man leaned far over the horse, shot the steel point of the long hickory shaft into the hump of muscle on the bull’s shoulder, and pulled his horse sideways as he pivoted on the pic, making a wound, enforcing the iron into the bull’s shoulder, making him bleed for Belmonte. 

The bull did not insist under the iron. He did not really want to get at the horse. He turned and the group broke apart and Romero was taking him out with his cape. He took him out softly and smoothly, and then stopped and, standing squarely in front of the bull, offered him the cape. The bull’s tail went up and he charged, and Romero moved his arms ahead of the bull, wheeling, his feet firmed. The dampened, mud-weighted cape swung open and full as a sail fills, and Romero pivoted with it just ahead of the bull. At the end of the pass they were facing each other again. Romero smiled. The bull wanted it again, and Romero’s cape filled again, this time on the other side. Each time he let the bull pass so close that the man and the bull and the cape that filled and pivoted ahead of the bull were all one sharply etched mass. It was all so slow and so controlled. It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep. He made four veronicas like that, and finished with a half-veronica that turned his back on the bull and came away toward the applause, his hand on his hip, his cape on his arm, and the bull watching his back going away. 

In his own bulls he was perfect. His first bull did not see well. After the first two passes with the cape Romero knew exactly how bad the vision was impaired. He worked accordingly. It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting. The crowd wanted the bull changed. They made a great row. Nothing very fine could happen with a bull that could not see the lures, but the President would not order him replaced. 

“Why don’t they change him?” Brett asked. 

“They’ve paid for him. They don’t want to lose their money.” 

“It’s hardly fair to Romero.” 

“Watch how he handles a bull that can’t see the color.” 

“It’s the sort of thing I don’t like to see.” 

It was not nice to watch if you cared anything about the person who was doing it. With the bull who could not see the colors of the capes, or the scarlet flannel of the muleta, Romero had to make the bull consent with his body. He had to get so close that the bull saw his body, and would start for it, and then shift the bull’s charge to the flannel and finish out the pass in the classic manner. The Biarritz crowd did not like it They thought Romero was afraid, and that was why he gave that little sidestep each time as he transferred the bull’s charge from his own body to the flannel. They preferred Belmonte’s imitation of himself or Marcial’s imitation of Belmonte. There were three of them in the row behind us. 

“What’s he afraid of the bull for? The bull’s so dumb he only goes after the cloth.” 

“He’s just a young bull-fighter. He hasn’t learned it yet.” 

“But I thought he was fine with the cape before.” 

“Probably he’s nervous now.” 

Out in the centre of the ring, all alone, Romero was going on with the same thing, getting so close that the bull could see him plainly, offering the body, offering it again a little closer, the bull watching dully, then so close that the bull thought he had him, offering again and finally drawing the charge and then, just before the horns came, giving the bull the red cloth to follow with at little, almost imperceptible, jerk that so offended the critical judgment of the Biarritz bull-fight experts. 

“He’s going to kill now,” I said to Brett. “The bull’s still strong. He wouldn’t wear himself out.” 

Out in the centre of the ring Romero profiled in front of the bull, drew the sword out from the folds of the muleta, rose on his toes, and sighted along the blade. The bull charged as Romero charged. Romero’s left hand dropped the muleta over the bull’s muzzle to blind him, his left shoulder went forward between the horns as the sword went in, and for just an instant he and the bull were one, Romero way out over the bull, the right arm extended high up to where the hilt of the sword had gone in between the bull’s shoulders. Then the figure was broken. There was a little jolt as Romero came clear, and then he was standing, one hand up, facing the bull, his shirt ripped out from under his sleeve, the white blowing in the wind, and the bull, the red sword hilt tight between his shoulders, his head going down and his legs settling. 

“There he goes,” Bill said. 

Romero was close enough so the bull could see him. His hand still up, he spoke to the bull. The bull gathered himself, then his head went forward and he went over slowly, then all over, suddenly, four feet in the air. 

They handed the sword to Romero, and carrying it blade down, the muleta in his other hand, he walked over to in front of the President’s box, bowed, straightened, and came over to the barrera and handed over the sword and muleta. 

“Bad one,” said the sword-handler. 

“He made me sweat,” said Romero. He wiped off his face. The sword-handler handed him the water-jug. Romero wiped his lips. It hurt him to drink out of the jug. He did not look up at us. 

Marcial had a big day. They were still applauding him when Romero’s last bull came in. It was the bull that had sprinted out and killed the man in the morning running. 

During Romero’s first bull his hurt face had been very noticeable. Everything he did showed it. All the concentration of the awkwardly delicate working with the bull that could not see well brought it out. The fight with Cohn had not touched his spirit but his face had been smashed and his body hurt. He was wiping all that out now. Each thing that he did with this bull wiped that out a little cleaner. It was a good bull, a big bull, and with horns, and it turned and recharged easily and surely. He was what Romero wanted in bulls. 

When he had finished his work with the muleta and was ready to kill, the crowd made him go on. They did not want the bull killed yet, they did not want it to be over. Romero went on. It was like a course in bull-fighting. All the passes he linked up, all completed, all slow, templed and smooth. There were no tricks and no mystifications. There was no brusqueness. And each pass as it reached the summit gave you a sudden ache inside. The crowd did not want it ever to be finished. 

The bull was squared on all four feet to be killed, and Romero killed directly below us. He killed not as he had been forced to by the last bull, but as he wanted to. He profiled directly in front of the bull, drew the sword out of the folds of the muleta and sighted along the blade. The bull watched him. Romero spoke to the bull and tapped one of his feet. The bull charged and Romero waited for the charge, the muleta held low, sighting along the blade, his feet firm. Then without taking a step forward, he became one with the bull, the sword was in high between the shoulders, the bull had followed the low-swung flannel, that disappeared as Romero lurched clear to the left, and it was over. The bull tried to go forward, his legs commenced to settle, he swung from side to side, hesitated, then went down on his knees, and Romero’s older brother leaned forward behind him and drove a short knife into the bull’s neck at the base of the horns. The first time he missed. He drove the knife in again, and the bull went over, twitching and rigid. Romero’s brother, holding the bull’s horn in one hand, the knife in the other, looked up at the President’s box. Handkerchiefs were waving all over the bull-ring. The President looked down from the box and waved his handkerchief. The brother cut the notched black ear from the dead bull and trotted over with it to Romero. The bull lay heavy and black on the sand, his tongue out. Boys were running toward him from all parts of the arena, making a little circle around him. They were starting to dance around the bull. 

Romero took the ear from his brother and held it up toward the President. The President bowed and Romero, running to get ahead of the crowd, came toward us. He leaned up against the barrera and gave the ear to Brett. He nodded his head and smiled. The crowd were all about him. Brett held down the cape. 

“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 up-stairs. Bill and I sat in the down-stairs 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 bull-fight. So was I. We both took a bull-fight 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. 

“To-morrow.” 

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 señor!” 

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 up-stairs. 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 bull-fighter 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 any more. 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 down-stairs 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. 

 

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 down-stairs. 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 to-night.” 

“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 overfoliaged, 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 another 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 kiosque 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 Château 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 overtipped 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 some time 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 every one 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 down-stairs 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. 

I walked around the harbor under the trees to the casino, and then up one of the cool streets to the Café Marinas. There was an orchestra playing inside the café and I sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the fresh coolness in the hot day, and had a glass of lemon-juice and shaved ice and then a long whiskey and soda. I sat in front of the Marinas for a long time and read and watched the people, and listened to the music. 

Later when it began to get dark, I walked around the harbor and out along the promenade, and finally back to the hotel for supper. There was a bicycle-race on, the Tour du Pays Basque, and the riders were stopping that night in San Sebastian. In the dining-room, at one side, there was a long table of bicycle-riders, eating with their trainers and managers. They were all French and Belgians, and paid close attention to their meal, but they were having a good time. At the head of the table were two good-looking French girls, with much Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic. I could not make out whom they belonged to. They all spoke in slang at the long table and there were many private jokes and some jokes at the far end that were not repeated when the girls asked to hear them. The next morning at five o’clock the race resumed with the last lap, San Sebastian-Bilbao. The bicycle-riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves. They had raced among themselves so often that it did not make much difference who won. Especially in a foreign country. The money could be arranged. 

The man who had a matter of two minutes lead in the race had an attack of boils, which were very painful. He sat on the small of his back. His neck was very red and the blond hairs were sunburned. The other riders joked him about his boils. He tapped on the table with his fork. 

“Listen,” he said, “to-morrow my nose is so tight on the handle-bars that the only thing touches those boils is a lovely breeze.” 

One of the girls looked at him down the table, and he grinned and turned red. The Spaniards, they said, did not know how to pedal. 

I had coffee out on the terrasse with the team manager of one of the big bicycle manufacturers. He said it had been a very pleasant race, and would have been worth watching if Bottechia had not abandoned it at Pamplona. The dust had been bad, but in Spain the roads were better than in France. Bicycle road-racing was the only sport in the world, he said. Had I ever followed the Tour de France? Only in the papers. The Tour de France was the greatest sporting event in the world. Following and organizing the road races had made him know France. Few people know France. All spring and all summer and all fall he spent on the road with bicycle road-racers. Look at the number of motor-cars now that followed the riders from town to town in a road race. It was a rich country and more _sportif_ every year. It would be the most _sportif_ country in the world. It was bicycle road-racing did it. That and football. He knew France. _La France Sportive._ He knew road-racing. We had a cognac. After all, though, it wasn’t bad to get back to Paris. There is only one Paname. In all the world, that is. Paris is the town the most _sportif_ in the world. Did I know the _Chope de Negre_? Did I not. I would see him there some time. I certainly would. We would drink another _fine_ together. We certainly would. They started at six o’clock less a quarter in the morning. Would I be up for the depart? I would certainly try to. Would I like him to call me? It was very interesting. I would leave a call at the desk. He would not mind calling me. I could not let him take the trouble. I would leave a call at the desk. We said good-bye until the next morning. 

In the morning when I awoke the bicycle-riders and their following cars had been on the road for three hours. I had coffee and the papers in bed and then dressed and took my bathing-suit down to the beach. Everything was fresh and cool and damp in the early morning. Nurses in uniform and in peasant costume walked under the trees with children. The Spanish children were beautiful. Some bootblacks sat together under a tree talking to a soldier. The soldier had only one arm. The tide was in and there was a good breeze and a surf on the beach. 

I undressed in one of the bath-cabins, crossed the narrow line of beach and went into the water. I swam out, trying to swim through the rollers, but having to dive sometimes. Then in the quiet water I turned and floated. Floating I saw only the sky, and felt the drop and lift of the swells. I swam back to the surf and coasted in, face down, on a big roller, then turned and swam, trying to keep in the trough and not have a wave break over me. It made me tired, swimming in the trough, and I turned and swam out to the raft. The water was buoyant and cold. It felt as though you could never sink. I swam slowly, it seemed like a long swim with the high tide, and then pulled up on the raft and sat, dripping, on the boards that were becoming hot in the sun. I 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 and gold-lettered names. Off on the right, almost closing the harbor, was a green hill with a castle. The raft rocked with the motion of the water. On the other side of the narrow gap that led into the open sea was another high headland. I thought I would like to swim across the bay but I was afraid of cramp. 

I sat in the sun and watched the bathers on the beach. They looked very small. After a while I stood up, gripped with my toes on the edge of the raft as it tipped with my weight, and dove cleanly and deeply, to come up through the lightening water, blew the salt water out of my head, and swam slowly and steadily in to shore. 

After I was dressed and had paid for the bath-cabin, I walked back to the hotel. The bicycle-racers had left several copies of _L’Auto_ around, and I gathered them up in the reading-room and took them out and sat in an easy chair in the sun to read about and catch up on French sporting life. While I was sitting there the concierge came out with a blue envelope in his hand. 

“A telegram for you, sir.” 

I poked my finger along under the fold that was fastened down, spread it open, and read it. It had been forwarded from Paris: 

                  COULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID

                  AM RATHER IN TROUBLE BRETT. 

I tipped the concierge and read the message again. A postman was coming along the sidewalk. He turned in the hotel. He had a big moustache and looked very military. He came out of the hotel again. The concierge was just behind him. 

“Here’s another telegram for you, sir.” 

“Thank you,” I said. 

I opened it. It was forwarded from Pamplona. 

                  COULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID

                  AM RATHER IN TROUBLE BRETT. 

The concierge stood there waiting for another tip, probably. 

“What time is there a train for Madrid?” 

“It left at nine this morning. There is a slow train at eleven, and the Sud Express at ten to-night.” 

“Get me a berth on the Sud Express. Do you want the money now?” 

“Just as you wish,” he said. “I will have it put on the bill.” 

“Do that.” 

Well, that meant San Sebastian all shot to hell. I suppose, vaguely, I had expected something of the sort. I saw the concierge standing in the doorway. 

“Bring me a telegram form, please.” 

He brought it and I took out my fountain-pen and printed: 

                   LADY ASHLEY HOTEL MONTANA MADRID

                   ARRIVING SUD EXPRESS TOMORROW LOVE

                   JAKE. 

That seemed to handle it. That was 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. That was it all right. I went in to lunch. 

I did not sleep much that night on the Sud Express. In the morning I had breakfast in the dining-car and 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 sky-line on the top of a little cliff away off across the sun-hardened country. 

The Norte station in Madrid is the end of the line. All trains finish there. They don’t go on anywhere. Outside were cabs and taxis and a line of hotel runners. It was like a country town. 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 until we were in the high, hot, modern town. The taxi coasted down a smooth street to the Puerta del Sol, and then through the traffic and out into the Carrera San Jeronimo. All the shops had their awnings down against the heat. The windows on the sunny side of the street were shuttered. The taxi stopped at the curb. I saw the sign HOTEL MONTANA on the second floor. The taxi-driver carried the bags in and left them by the elevator. I could not make the elevator work, so I walked up. On the second floor up was a cut brass sign: HOTEL MONTANA. I rang and no one came to the door. I rang again and a maid with a sullen face opened the door. 

“Is Lady Ashley here?” I asked. 

She looked at me dully. 

“Is an Englishwoman here?” 

She turned and called some one inside. A very fat woman came to the door. Her hair was gray and stiffly oiled in scallops around her face. She was short and commanding. 

“Muy buenos,” I said. “Is there an Englishwoman here? I would like to see this English lady.” 

“Muy buenos. Yes, there is a female English. Certainly you can see her if she wishes to see you.” 

“She wishes to see me.” 

“The chica will ask her.” 

“It is very hot.” 

“It is very hot in the summer in Madrid.” 

“And how cold in winter.” 

“Yes, it is very cold in winter.” 

Did I want to stay myself in person in the Hotel Montana? 

Of that as yet I was undecided, but it would give me pleasure if my bags were brought up from the ground floor in order that they might not be stolen. Nothing was ever stolen in the Hotel Montana. In other fondas, yes. Not here. No. The personages of this establishment were rigidly selectioned. I was happy to hear it. Nevertheless I would welcome the upbringal of my bags. 

The maid came in and said that the female English wanted to see the male English now, at once. 

“Good,” I said. “You see. It is as I said.” 

“Clearly.” 

I followed the maid’s back down a long, dark corridor. At the end she knocked on a door. 

“Hello,” said Brett. “Is it you, Jake?” 

“It’s me.” 

“Come in. Come in.” 

I opened the door. The maid closed it after me. Brett was in bed. She had just been brushing her hair and held the brush in her hand. The room was in that disorder produced only by those who have always had servants. 

“Darling!” Brett said. 

I went over to the bed and put my arms around her. She kissed me, and while she kissed me I could feel she was thinking of something else. She was trembling in my arms. She felt very small. 

“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.” 

“You were probably damn good for him.” 

“He shouldn’t be living with any one. I realized that right away.” 

“No.” 

“Oh, hell!” she said, “let’s not talk about it. Let’s never talk about it.” 

“All right.” 

“It was rather a knock his being ashamed of me. He was ashamed of me for a while, you know.” 

“No.” 

“Oh, yes. They ragged him about me at the café, I guess. He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell.” 

“It’s funny.” 

“He said it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright.” 

“What happened?” 

“Oh, he got over that. He wasn’t ashamed of me long.” 

“What was it about being in trouble?” 

“I didn’t know whether I could make him go, and I didn’t have a sou to go away and leave him. He tried to give me a lot of money, you know. I told him I had scads of it. He knew that was a lie. I couldn’t take his money, you know.” 

“No.” 

“Oh, let’s not talk about it. There were some funny things, though. Do give me a cigarette.” 

I lit the cigarette. 

“He learned his English as a waiter in Gib.” 

“Yes.” 

“He wanted to marry me, finally.” 

“Really?” 

“Of course. I can’t even marry Mike.” 

“Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley.” 

“No. It wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.” 

“You ought to feel set up.” 

“I do. I’m all right again. He’s wiped out that damned Cohn.” 

“Good.” 

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

“Outside of your personal appearance.” 

“Oh, he’d have gotten used to that.” 

She put out the cigarette. 

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

“No.” 

“I’m not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.” 

“Good.” 

She looked away. I thought she was looking for another cigarette. Then I saw she was crying. I could feel her crying. Shaking and crying. She wouldn’t look up. I put my arms around her. 

“Don’t let’s ever talk about it. Please don’t let’s ever talk about it.” 

“Dear Brett.” 

“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.” 

She would not look up. I stroked her hair. I could feel her shaking. 

“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. The bill had been paid. 

“Oh, well. Let it go,” Brett said. “It doesn’t matter now.” 

We rode in a taxi down to the Palace Hotel, left the bags, arranged for berths on the Sud Express for the night, and went into the bar of the hotel for a cocktail. We sat on high stools at the bar while the barman shook the Martinis in a large nickelled shaker. 

“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.” 

“No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice.” 

“It’s odd.” 

“Bartenders have always been fine.” 

“You know,” Brett said, “it’s quite true. He is only nineteen. Isn’t it amazing?” 

We touched the two glasses as they stood side by side on the bar. They were coldly beaded. Outside the curtained window was the summer heat of Madrid. 

“I like an olive in a Martini,” I said to the barman. 

“Right you are, sir. There you are.” 

“Thanks.” 

“I should have asked, you know.” 

The barman went far enough up the bar so that he would not hear our conversation. Brett had sipped from the Martini as it stood, on the wood. Then she picked it up. Her hand was steady enough to lift it after that first sip. 

“It’s good. Isn’t it a nice bar?” 

“They’re all nice bars.” 

“You know I didn’t believe it at first. He was born in 1905. I was in school in Paris, then. Think of that.” 

“Anything you want me to think about it?” 

“Don’t be an ass. _Would_ you buy a lady a drink?” 

“We’ll have two more Martinis.” 

“As they were before, sir?” 

“They were very good.” Brett smiled at him. 

“Thank you, ma’am.” 

“Well, bung-o,” Brett said. 

“Bung-o!” 

“You know,” Brett said, “he’d only been with two women before. He never cared about anything but bull-fighting.” 

“He’s got plenty of time.” 

“I don’t know. He thinks it was me. Not the show in general.” 

“Well, it was you.” 

“Yes. It was me.” 

“I thought you weren’t going to ever talk about it.” 

“How can I help it?” 

“You’ll lose it if you talk about it.” 

“I just talk around it. You know I feel rather damned good, Jake.” 

“You should.” 

“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.” 

“Should we have another Martini?” 

The barman shook up two more Martinis and poured them out into fresh glasses. 

“Where will we have lunch?” I asked Brett. The bar was cool. You could feel the heat outside through the window. 

“Here?” asked Brett. 

“It’s rotten here in the hotel. Do you know a place called Botin’s?” I asked the barman. 

“Yes, sir. Would you like to have me write out the address?” 

“Thank you.” 

We lunched up-stairs at Botin’s. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank _rioja_ _alta_. Brett did not eat much. She never ate much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of _rioja alta_. 

“How do you feel, Jake?” Brett asked. “My God! what a meal you’ve eaten.” 

“I feel fine. Do you want a dessert?” 

“Lord, no.” 

Brett was smoking. 

“You like to eat, don’t you?” she said. 

“Yes.” I said. “I like to do a lot of things.” 

“What do you like to do?” 

“Oh,” I said, “I like to do a lot of things. Don’t you want a dessert?” 

“You asked me that once,” Brett said. 

“Yes,” I said. “So I did. Let’s have another bottle of _rioja alta_.” 

“It’s very good.” 

“You haven’t drunk much of it,” I said. 

“I have. You haven’t seen.” 

“Let’s get two bottles,” I said. The bottles came. I poured a little in my glass, then a glass for Brett, then filled my glass. We touched glasses. 

“Bung-o!” Brett said. I drank my glass and poured out another. Brett put her hand on my arm. 

“Don’t get drunk, Jake,” she said. “You don’t have to.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Don’t,” she said. “You’ll be all right.” 

“I’m not getting drunk,” I said. “I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine.” 

“Don’t get drunk,” she said. “Jake, don’t get drunk.” 

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

“Right,” Brett said. “I haven’t seen Madrid. I should see Madrid.” 

“I’ll finish this,” I said. 

Down-stairs we came out through the first-floor dining-room to the street. A waiter went for a taxi. It was hot and bright. Up the street was a little square with trees and grass where there were taxis parked. A taxi came up the street, the waiter hanging out at the side. I tipped him and told the driver where to drive, and got in beside Brett. The driver started up the street. I settled back. Brett moved close to me. We sat close against each other. I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortably. It was very hot and bright, and the houses looked sharply white. 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?” 

THE END