The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway (classic literature list .txt) 📖

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. Bullfighters are not like that.”

“What are bullfighters 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 tonight.”

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 bullfighter 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.

XVII

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 someone 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 bullfight. 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 bullfighter 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. Someone 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