Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

“It’s pretty good,” I said. “They let the bulls out of the cages one at a time, and they have steers in the corral to receive them and keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down.”

“Do they ever gore the steers?”

“Sure. Sometimes they go right after them and kill them.”

“Can’t the steers do anything?”

“No. They’re trying to make friends.”

“What do they have them in for?”

“To quiet down the bulls and keep them from breaking their horns against the stone walls, or goring each other.”

“Must be swell being a steer.”

We went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the cafė Iruсa. There were two lonely looking ticket-houses standing in the square. Their windows, marked SOL, SOL Y SOMBRA, and SOMBRA, were shut. They would not open until the day before the fiesta.

Across the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iruсa extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street. I looked for Brett and Mike at the tables. There they were. Brett and Mike and Robert Cohn. Brett was wearing a Basque beret. So was Mike. Robert Cohn was bare-headed and wearing his spectacles. Brett saw us coming and waved. Her eyes crinkled up as we came up to the table.

“Hello, you chaps!” she called.

Brett was happy. Mike had a way of getting an intensity of feeling into shaking hands. Robert Cohn shook hands because we were back.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.

“I brought them up here,” Cohn said.

“What rot,” Brett said. “We’d have gotten here earlier if you hadn’t come.”

“You’d never have gotten here.”

“What rot! You chaps are brown. Look at Bill.”

“Did you get good fishing?” Mike asked. “We wanted to join you.”

“It wasn’t bad. We missed you.”

“I wanted to come,” Cohn said, “but I thought I ought to bring them.”

“You bring us. What rot.”

“Was it really good?” Mike asked. “Did you take many?”

“Some days we took a dozen apiece. There was an Englishman up there.”

“Named Harris,” Bill said. “Ever know him, Mike? He was in the war, too.”

“Fortunate fellow,” Mike said. “What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Were you in the war, Mike?” Cohn asked.

“Was I not.”

“He was a very distinguished soldier,” Brett said. “Tell them about the time your horse bolted down Piccadilly.”

“I’ll not. I’ve told that four times.”

“You never told me,” Robert Cohn said.

“I’ll not tell that story. It reflects discredit on me.”

“Tell them about your medals.”

“I’ll not. That story reflects great discredit on me.”

“What story’s that?”

“Brett will tell you. She tells all the stories that reflect discredit on me.”

“Go on. Tell it, Brett.”

“Should I?”

“I’ll tell it myself.”

“What medals have you got, Mike?”

“I haven’t got any medals.”

“You must have some.”

“I suppose I’ve the usual medals. But I never sent in for them. One time there was this whopping big dinner and the Prince of Wales was to be there, and the cards said medals will be worn. So naturally I had no medals, and I stopped at my tailor’s and he was impressed by the invitation, and I thought that’s a good piece of business, and I said to him: ’You’ve got to fix me up with some medals.’ He said: ’What medals, sir?’ And I said: ’Oh, any medals. Just give me a few medals.’ So he said: ’What medals have you, sir?’ And I said: ’How should I know?’ Did he think I spent all my time reading the bloody gazette? ’Just give me a good lot. Pick them out yourself.’ So he got me some medals, you know, miniature medals, and handed me the box, and I put it in my pocket and forgot it. Well, I went to the dinner, and it was the night they’d shot Henry Wilson, so the Prince didn’t come and the King didn’t come, and no one wore any medals, and all these coves were busy taking off their medals, and I had mine in my pocket.”

He stopped for us to laugh.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all. Perhaps I didn’t tell it right.”

“You didn’t,” said Brett. “But no matter.”

We were all laughing.

“Ah, yes,” said Mike. “I know now. It was a damn dull dinner, and I couldn’t stick it, so I left. Later on in the evening I found the box in my pocket. What’s this? I said. Medals? Bloody military medals? So I cut them all off their backing-you know, they put them on a strip-and gave them all around. Gave one to each girl. Form of souvenir. They thought I was hell’s own shakes of a soldier. Give away medals in a night club. Dashing fellow.”

“Tell the rest,” Brett said.

“Don’t you think that was funny?” Mike asked. We were all laughing. “It was. I swear it was. Any rate, my tailor wrote me and wanted the medals back. Sent a man around. Kept on writing for months. Seems some chap had left them to be cleaned. Frightfully military cove. Set hell’s own store by them.” Mike paused. “Rotten luck for the tailor,” he said.

“You don’t mean it,” Bill said. “I should think it would have been grand for the tailor.”

“Frightfully good tailor. Never believe it to see me now,” Mike said. “I used to pay him a hundred pounds a year just to keep him quiet. So he wouldn’t send me any bills. Frightful blow to him when I went bankrupt. It was right after the medals. Gave his letters rather a bitter tone.”

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

“What brought it on?”

“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.”

“Tell them about in the court,” Brett said.

“I don’t remember,” Mike said. “I was just a little tight.”

“Tight!” Brett exclaimed. “You were blind!”

“Extraordinary thing,” Mike said. “Met my former partner the other day. Offered to buy me a drink.”

“Tell them about your learned counsel,” Brett said.

“I will not,” Mike said. “My learned counsel was blind, too. I say this is a gloomy subject. Are we going down and see these bulls unloaded or not?”

“Let’s go down.”

We called the waiter, paid, and started to walk through the town. I started off walking with Brett, but Robert Cohn came up and joined her on the other side. The three of us walked along, past the Ayuntamiento with the banners hung from the balcony, down past the market and down past the steep street that led to the bridge across the Arga. There were many people walking to go and see the bulls, and carriages drove down the hill and across the bridge, the drivers, the horses, and the whips rising above the walking people in the street. Across the bridge we turned up a road to the corrals. We passed a wineshop with a sign in the window: Good Wine 30 Centimes A Liter.

“That’s where we’ll go when funds get low,” Brett said.

The woman standing in the door of the wine-shop looked at us as we passed. She called to some one in the house and three girls came to the window and stared. They were staring at Brett.

At the gate of the corrals two men took tickets from the people that went in. We went in through the gate. There were trees inside and a iow, stone house. At the far end was the stone wall of the corrals, with apertures in the stone that were like loop-holes running all along the face of each corral. A ladder led up to the top of the wall, and people were climbing up the ladder and spreading down to stand on the walls that separated the two corrals. As we came up the ladder, walking across the grass under the trees, we passed the big, gray painted cages with the bulls in them. There was one bull in each travelling-box. They had come by train from a bull-breeding ranch in Castile, and had been unloaded off flat-cars at the station and brought up here to be let out of their cages into the corrals. Each cage was stencilled with the name and the brand of the bull-breeder.