Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“It is all right,” Enrique said. “There is nothing to forgive. But it was not out of any book.”

“But does it hurt always?”

“Only when I am touched or jarred.”

“And the spinal cord?”

“It was touched a very little. Also the kidneys, but they are all right. The shell fragment went in one side and out the other. There are other wounds lower down and on my legs.”

“Enrique, please forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive. But it is not nice that I cannot make love and I am sorry that I am not gay.”

“We can make love after it is well.”

“Yes.”

“And it will be well.”

“Yes.”

“And I will take care of you.”

“No. I will take care of you. I do not mind this thing at all. Only the pain of touching or jarring. It does not bother me. Now we must work. We must leave this place now. Everything that is here must be moved tonight. It must be stored in a new and unsuspected place and in one where it will not deteriorate. It will be a long time before we will need it. There is much to be done before we will ever reach that stage again. Many must be educated. These cartridges may no longer serve by then. This climate ruins the primers. And we must go now. I am a fool to have stayed here this long and the fool who put me here will answer to the committee.”

“I am to take you there tonight. They thought this house was safe for you to stay today.”

“This house is a folly.”

“We will go now.”

“We should have gone before.”

“Kiss me, Enrique.”

“We’ll do it very carefully,” he said.

Then, in the dark on the bed, holding himself carefully, his eyes closed, their lips against each other, the happiness there with no pain, the being home suddenly there with no pain, the being alive returning and no pain, the comfort of being loved and still no pain; so there was a hollowness of loving, now no longer hollow, and the two sets of lips in the dark, pressing so that they were happily and kindly, darkly and warmly at home and without pain in the darkness, there came the siren cutting, suddenly, to rise like all the pain in the world. It was the real siren, not the one of the radio. It was not one siren. It was two. They were coming both ways up the street.

He turned his head and then stood up. He thought that coming home had not lasted very long.

“Go out the door and across the lot,” he said. “Go. I can shoot from up here and make a diversion.”

“No, you go,” she said. “Please, I will stay here to shoot and they will think you’re inside.”

“Come on” he said. “We’ll both go. There’s nothing to defend here. This stuff is useless. It’s better to get away.”

“I want to stay,” she said. “I want to protect you.”

She reached for the pistol in the holster under his arm and he slapped her face. “Come on. Don’t be a silly girl. Come on! ”

They were going down the stairs now and he felt her close beside him. He swung the door open and together they stepped out the door and were clear of the building. He turned and locked the door. “Run, Maria,” he said. “Across the lot in that direction. Go!”

“I want to go with you.”

He slapped her again quickly. “Run. Then dive in the weeds and crawl. Forgive me, Maria. But go. I go the other way. Go,” he said. “Damn you. Go .”

They started into the weeds at the same time. He ran twenty paces and then, as the police cars stopped in front of the house, the sirens dying, he dropped flat and started to crawl.

The weed pollen was dusty in his face and as he wriggled steadily along, the sand-burrs stabbing his hands and knees sharply and minutely, he heard them coming around the house. They had surrounded it.

He crawled steadily, thinking hard, giving no importance to the pain.

“But why the sirens?” he thought. “ Why no third car from the rear? Why no spotlight or a searchlight on this field? Cubans,” he thought. “Can they be this stupid and theatrical? They must have thought there was no one in the house. They must have come only to seize the stuff. But why the sirens?”

Behind him he heard them breaking in the door. They were all around the house. He heard two blasts on a whistle from close to the house and he wriggled steadily on.

“The fools,” he thought. “But they must have found the basket and the dishes by now. What people! What a way to raid a house!”

He was almost to the edge of the lot now and he knew that he must rise and make a dash across the road for the far houses. He had found a way of crawling that hurt little. He could adjust himself to almost any movement. It was the brusque changes that hurt, and he dreaded rising to his feet.

In the weeds he rose on one knee, took the shock of the pain, held through it, and then brought it on again as he drew the other foot alongside his knee in order to rise.

He started to run toward the house across the street, at the back of the next lot, when the clicking on of the searchlight caught him so that he was full in the beam, looking toward it, the blackness a sharp line on either side.

The searchlight was from the police car that had come silently, without siren, and posted itself at one back corner of the lot.

As Enrique rose to his feet, thin, gaunt, sharply outlined in the beam, pulling at the big pistol in the holster under his armpit, the submachine guns opened on him from the darkened car.

The feeling is that of being clubbed across the chest and he only felt the first one. The other clubbing thuds that came were echoes.

He went forward onto his face in the weeds and as he fell, or perhaps it was between the time the searchlight went on and the first bullet reached him, he had one thought. “They are not so stupid. Perhaps something can be done with them.”

If he had had time for another thought it would have been to hope there was no car at the other corner. But there was a car at the other corner and its searchlight was going over the field. Its wide beam was playing over the weeds, where the girl, Maria, lay hidden. In the dark car the machine gunners, their guns poised, followed the sweep of the beam with the fluted, efficient ugliness of the Thompson muzzles.

In the shadow of the tree, behind the darkened car from which the searchlight played, there was a Negro standing. He wore a flat-topped, narrow-brimmed straw hat and an alpaca coat. Under his shirt he wore a string of blue voodoo beads. He was standing quietly watching the lights working.

The searchlights played on over the weedfield where the girl lay flat against the ground, her chin in the earth. She had not moved since she heard the burst of firing. She could feel her heart beating against the ground.

“Do you see her?” asked one of the men in the car.

“Let them beat through the weeds for the other side,” the lieutenant in the front seat said. “ Hola ,” he called to the Negro under the tree. “Go to the house and tell them to beat toward us through the weeds in extended order. Are there only the two?”

“Only two,” the Negro said in a quiet voice. “We have the other one.”

“Go.”

“Yes sir, Lieutenant,” the Negro said.

Holding his straw hat in both hands he started to run along the edge of the field toward the house where, now, lights shone from all the windows.

In the field the girl lay, her hands clasped across the top of her head. “Help me to bear this,” she said into the weeds, speaking to no one, for there was no one there. Then, suddenly, personally, sobbing, “Help me, Vicente. Help me, Felipe. Help me, Chucho. Help me, Arturo. Help me now, Enrique. Help me.”

At one time she would have prayed, but she had lost that and now she needed something.