Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“I better go back and see George,” Nick said.

“So long,” said Ole Andreson. He did not look toward Nick. “Thanks for coming around.”

Nick went out. As he shut the door he saw Ole Andreson with all his clothes on, lying on the bed looking at the wall.

“He’s been in his room all day,” the landlady said down-stairs. “I guess he don’t feel well. I said to him: ‘Mr. Andreson, you ought to go out and take a walk on a nice fall day like this,’ but he didn’t feel like it.”

“He doesn’t want to go out.”

“I’m sorry he don’t feel well,” the woman said. “He’s an awfully nice man. He was in the ring, you know.”

“I know it.”

“You’d never know it except from the way his face is,” the woman said. They stood talking just inside the street door. “He’s just as gentle.”

“Well, good-night, Mrs. Hirsch,” Nick said.

“I’m not Mrs. Hirsch,” the woman said. “She owns the place. I just look after it for her. I’m Mrs. Bell.”

“Well, good-night, Mrs. Bell,” Nick said.

“Good-night,” the woman said.

Nick walked up the dark street to the corner under the arc-light, and then along the car-tracks to Henry’s eating-house. George was inside, back of the counter.

“Did you see Ole?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “He’s in his room and he won’t go out.”

The cook opened the door from the kitchen when he heard Nick’s voice.

“I don’t even listen to it,” he said and shut the door.

“Did you tell him about it?” George asked.

“Sure. I told him but he knows what it’s all about.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“They’ll kill him.”

“I guess they will.”

“He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago.”

“I guess so,” said Nick.

“It’s a hell of a thing.”

“It’s an awful thing,” Nick said.

They did not say anything. George reached down for a towel and wiped the counter.

“I wonder what he did?” Nick said.

“Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for.”

“I’m going to get out of this town,” Nick said.

“Yes,” said George. “That’s a good thing to do.”

“I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”

“Well,” said George, “you better not think about it.”

THE ROAD OF THE PASS WAS HARD AND smooth and not yet dusty in the early morning. Below were the hills with oak and chestnut trees, and far away below was the sea. On the other side were snowy mountains.

We came down from the pass through wooded country. There were bags of charcoal piled beside the road, and through the trees we saw charcoal-burners’ huts. It was Sunday and the road, rising and falling, but always dropping away from the altitude of the pass, went through the scrub woods and through villages.

Outside the villages there were fields with vines. The fields were brown and the vines coarse and thick. The houses were white, and in the streets the men, in their Sunday clothes, were playing bowls. Against the walls of some of the houses there were pear trees, their branches candelabraed against the white walls. The pear trees had been sprayed, and the walls of the houses were stained a metallic blue-green by the spray vapor. There were small clearings around the villages where the vines grew, and then the woods.

In a village, twenty kilometres above Spezia, there was a crowd in the square, and a young man carrying a suitcase came up to the car and asked us to take him in to Spezia.

“There are only two places, and they are occupied,” I said. We had an old Ford coupé.

“I will ride on the outside.”

“You will be uncomfortable.”

“That makes nothing. I must go to Spezia.”

“Should we take him?” I asked Guy.

“He seems to be going anyway,” Guy said. The young man handed in a parcel through the window.

“Look after this,” he said. Two men tied his suitcase on the back of the car, above our suitcases. He shook hands with every one, explained that to a Fascist and a man as used to travelling as himself there was no discomfort, and climbed up on the running-board on the left-hand side of the car, holding on inside, his right arm through the open window.

“You can start,” he said. The crowd waved. He waved with his free hand.

“What did he say?” Guy asked me.

“That we could start.”

“Isn’t he nice?” Guy said.

The road followed a river. Across the river were mountains. The sun was taking the frost out of the grass. It was bright and cold and the air came through the open wind-shield.

“How do you think he likes it out there?” Guy was looking up the road. His view out of his side of the car was blocked by our guest. The young man projected from the side of the car like the figurehead of a ship. He had turned his coat collar up and pulled his hat down and his nose looked cold in the wind.

“Maybe he’ll get enough of it,” Guy said. “That’s the side our bum tire’s on.”

“Oh, he’d leave us if we blew out,” I said. “He wouldn’t get his travelling-clothes dirty.”

“Well, I don’t mind him,” Guy said—“except the way he leans out on the turns.”

The woods were gone; the road had left the river to climb; the radiator was boiling; the young man looked annoyedly and suspiciously at the steam and rusty water; the engine was grinding, with both Guy’s feet on the first-speed pedal, up and up, back and forth and up, and, finally, out level. The grinding stopped, and in the new quiet there was a great churning bubbling in the radiator. We were at the top of the last range above Spezia and the sea. The road descended with short, barely rounded turns. Our guest hung out on the turns and nearly pulled the top-heavy car over.

“You can’t tell him not to,” I said to Guy. “It’s his sense of self-preservation.”

“The great Italian sense.”

“The greatest Italian sense.”

We came down around curves, through deep dust, the dust powdering the olive trees. Spezia spread below along the sea. The road flattened outside the town. Our guest put his head in the window.

“I want to stop.”

“Stop it,” I said to Guy.

We slowed up, at the side of the road. The young man got down, went to the back of the car and untied the suitcase.

“I stop here, so you won’t get into trouble carrying passengers,” he said. “My package.”

I handed him the package. He reached in his pocket.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Then thanks,” the young man said, not “thank you,” or “thank you very much,” or “thank you a thousand times,” all of which you formerly said in Italy to a man when he handed you a time-table or explained about a direction. The young man uttered the lowest form of the word “thanks” and looked after us suspiciously as Guy started the car. I waved my hand at him. He was too dignified to reply. We went on into Spezia.

“That’s a young man that will go a long way in Italy,” I said to Guy.

“Well,” said Guy, “he went twenty kilometres with us.”

We came into Spezia looking for a place to eat. The street was wide and the houses high and yellow. We followed the tram-track into the center of town. On the walls of the houses were stencilled eye-bugging portraits of Mussolini, with hand-painted “vivas,” the double V in black paint with drippings of paint down the wall. Side-streets went down to the harbor. It was bright and the people were all out for Sunday. The stone paving had been sprinkled and there were damp stretches in the dust. We went close to the curb to avoid a tram.