ERNEST HEMINGWAY - Premium Edition. Ernest Hemingway
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