Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“Sure,” said Fontan. André turned to me.

“How old do you think I am? Do you think I look fourteen years old?” He was a thin little boy, but his face looked sixteen.

“Yes. You look fourteen.”

“When I go to the show I crouch down like this and try to look small.” His voice was very high and breaking. “If I give them a quarter they keep it all but if I give them only fifteen cents they let me in all right.”

“I only give you fifteen cents, then,” said Fontan.

“No. Give me the whole quarter. I’ll get it changed on the way.”

“Il faut revenir tout de suite après le show,” Madame Fontan said.

“I come right back.” André went out the door. The night was cooling outside. He left the door open and a cool breeze came in.

“Mangez!” said Madame Fontan. “You haven’t eaten anything.” I had eaten two helpings of chicken and French fried potatoes, three ears of sweet com, some sliced cucumbers, and two helpings of salad.

“Perhaps he wants some kek,” Fontan said.

“I should have gotten some kek for him,” Madame Fontan said. “Mangez du fromage. Mangez du crimcheez. Vous n’avez rien mangé. I ought have gotten kek. Americans always eat kek.”

“Mais j’ai rudement bien mangé.”

“Mangez! Vous n’avez rien mangé. Eat it all. We don’t save anything. Eat it all up.”

“Eat some more salad,” Fontan said.

“I’ll get some more beer,” Madame Fontan said. “If you work all day in a book-factory you get hungry.”

“Elle ne comprend pas que vous êtes écrivain,” Fontan said. He was a delicate old man who used the slang and knew the popular songs of his period of military service in the end of the 1890’s. “He writes the books himself,” he explained to Madame.

“You write the books yourself?” Madame asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Oh!” she said. “Oh! You write them yourself. Oh! Well, you get hungry if you do that too. Mangez! Je vais chercher de la bière.”

We heard her walking on the stairs to the cellar. Fontan smiled at me. He was very tolerant of people who had not his experience and worldly knowledge.

When André came home from the show we were still sitting in the kitchen and were talking about hunting.

“Labor day we all went to Clear Creek,” Madame said. “Oh, my God, you ought to have been there all right. We all went in the truck. Tout le monde est allé dans le truck. Nous sommes partis le dimanche. C’est le truck de Charley.”

“On a mangé, on a bu du vin, de la bière, et il y avait aussi un français qui a apporté de l’absinthe,” Fontan said. “Un français de la Californie!”

“My God, nous avons chanté. There’s a farmer comes to see what’s the matter, and we give him something to drink, and he stayed with us awhile. There was some Italians come too, and they want to stay with us too. We sung a song about the Italians and they don’t understand it. They didn’t know we didn’t want them, but we didn’t have nothing to do with them, and after a while they went away.”

“How many fish did you catch?”

“Très peu. We went to fish a little while, but then we came back to sing again. Nous avons chanté, vous savez.”

“In the night,” said Madame, “toutes les femmes ont dormi dans le truck. Les hommes à côté du feu. In the night I hear Fontan come to get some more wine, and I tell him, Fontan, my God, leave some for tomorrow. Tomorrow they won’ have anything to drink, and then they’ll be sorry.”

“Mais nous avons tout bu,” Fontan said. “Et le lendemain il ne reste rien.”

“What did you do?”

“Nous avons pêché sérieusement.”

“Good trout, all right, too. My God, yes. All the same; half-pound one ounce.”

“How big?”

“Half-pound one ounce. Just right to eat. All the same size; half-pound one ounce.”

“How do you like America?” Fontan asked me.

“It’s my country, you see. So I like it, because it’s my country. Mais on ne mange pas très bien. D’antan, oui. Mais maintenant, no.”

“No,” said Madame. “On ne mange pas bien.” She shook her head. “Et aussi, il y a trop de Polack. Quand jétais petite ma mère m’a dit, ‘vous mangez comme les Polacks.’ Je n’ai jamais compris ce que c’est qu’un Polack. Mais maintenant en Amérique je comprends. Il y a trop de Polack. Et, my God, ils sont sales, les Polacks.”

“It is fine for hunting and fishing,” I said.

“Oui. Ça, c’est le meilleur. La chasse et la pêche,” Fontan said. “Qu’estce que vous avez comme fusil?”

“A twelve-gauge pump.”

“Il est bon, le pump,” Fontan nodded his head.

“Je veux aller à la chasse moi-même,” André said in his high, little boy’s voice.

“Tu ne peux pas,” Fontan said. He turned to me.

“Ils sont des sauvages, les boys, vous savez. Ils sont des sauvages. Ils veulent shooter les uns les autres.”

“Je veux aller tout seul,” André said, very shrill and excited.

“You can’t go,” Madame Fontan said. “You are too young.”

“Je veux aller tout seul,” André said shrilly. “Je veux shooter les rats d’eau.”

“What are rats d’eau?” I asked.

“You don’t know them? Sure you know them. What they call the muskrats.”

André had brought the twenty-two-calibre rifle out from the cupboard and was holding it in his hands under the light.

“Ils sont des sauvages,” Fontan explained. “Ils veulent shooter les uns les autres.”

“Je veux aller tout seul,” André shrilled. He looked desperately along the barrel of the gun. “Je veux shooter les rats d’eau. Je connais beaucoup de rats d’eau.”

“Give me the gun,” Fontan said. He explained again to me. “They’re savages. They would shoot one another.”

André held tight on to the gun.

“On peut looker. On ne fait pas de mal. On peut looker.”

“Il est crazy pour le shooting,” Madame Fontan said. “Mais il est trop jeune.”

André put the twenty-two-calibre rifle back in the cupboard.

“When I’m bigger I’ll shoot the muskrats and the jack-rabbits too,” he said in English. “One time I went out with Papa and he shot a jack-rabbit just a little bit and I shot it and hit it.”

“C’est vrai,” Fontan nodded. “Il a tué un jack.”

“But he hit it first,” André said. “I want to go all by myself and shoot all by myself. Next year I can do it.” He went over in a corner and sat down to read a book. I had picked it up when we came into the kitchen to sit after supper. It was a library book— Frank on a Gunboat .

“Il aime les books,” Madame Fontan said. “But it’s better than to run around at night with the other boys and steal things.”

“Books are all right,” Fontan said. “Monsieur il fait les books.”

“Yes, that’s so, all right. But too many books are bad,” Madame Fontan said. “Ici, c’est une maladie, les books. C’est comme les churches. Ici il y a trop de churches. En France il y a seulement les catholiques et les protestants—et très peu de protestants. Mais ici rien que de churches. Quand j’étais venu ici je disais, oh, my God, what are all the churches?”

“C’est vrai,” Fontan said. “Il y a trop de churches.”

“The other day,” Madame Fontan said, “there was a little French girl here with her mother, the cousin of Fontan, and she said to me, ‘En Amérique il ne faut pas être catholique. It’s not good to be catholique. The Americans don’t like you to be catholique. It’s like the dry law.’ I said to her, ‘What you going to be? Heh? It’s better to be catholique if you’re catholique.’ But she said, ‘No, it isn’t any good to be catholique in America.’ But I think it’s better to be catholique if you are. Ce n’est pas bon de changer sa religion. My God, no.”