Эрнест Хемингуэй - Across the River and Into the Trees

'I'd love to if Andrea isn't angry.'

'I'm never angry.'

'Would you have a drink with us, Andrea?'

'No,' said Andrea. 'Get along to your table. I'm sick of seeing it unoccupied.'

'Good–bye, Carlo. Thanks for the drink we didn't have.'

' Ciao , Ricardo,' Andrea said and that was all.

He turned his fine, long, tall back on them and looked into the mirror that is placed behind bars so a man can tell when he is drinking too much and decided that he did not like what he saw there. 'Ettore,' he said. 'Please put this nonsense on my bill.'

He walked out after waiting carefully for his coat, swinging into it and tipping the man who brought it exactly what he should be tipped plus twenty per cent.

At the corner table, Renata said, 'Do you think we hurt his feelings?'

'No. He loves you and he likes me.'

'Andrea is so nice. And you're so nice.'

'Waiter,' the Colonel called; then asked, 'Do you want a dry Martini, too?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I'd love one.'

'Two very dry Martinis,' the Colonel said. 'Montgomerys. Fifteen to one.'

The waiter, who had been in the desert, smiled and was gone and the Colonel turned to Renata.

'You're nice,' he said. 'You're also very beautiful and lovely and I love you.'

'You always say that and I don't know what it means but I like to hear it.'

'How old are you now?'

'Nearly nineteen. Why?'

'And you don't know what it means?'

'No. Why should I? Americans always say it to you before they go away. It seems to be necessary to them. But I love you very much, too, whatever that is.'

'Let's have a fine time,' the Colonel said. 'Let's not think about anything at all.'

'I would like that. I cannot think very well this time of day at any rate.'

'Here are the drinks,' the Colonel said. 'Remember not to say, chin–chin.'

'I remember that from before. I never say chin–chin, nor here's to you, nor bottoms up.'

'We just raise the glass to each other and, if you wish, we can touch the edges.'

'I wish,' she said.

The Martinis were icy cold and true Montgomerys and, after touching the edges, they felt them glow happily all through their upper bodies.

'And what have you been doing?' the Colonel asked.

'Nothing. I still wait to go away to school.'

'Where now?'

'God knows. Wherever I go to learn English.'

'Turn your head and raise your chin once for me.'

'You're not making fun?'

'No. I'm not making fun.'

She turned her head and raised her chin, without vanity, nor coquetry and the Colonel felt his heart turn over inside him, as though some sleeping animal had rolled over in its burrow and frightened, deliciously, the other animal sleeping close beside.

'Oh, you,' he said. 'Would you ever like to run for Queen of Heaven?'

'That would be sacrilegious.'

'Yes,' he said. 'I suppose it would and I withdraw the suggestion.'

'Richard,' she said. 'No, I can't say it.'

'Say it.'

'No.'

The Colonel thought, I order you to say it. And she said, 'Please never look at me like that.'

'I'm sorry,' the Colonel said. 'I had just slipped into my trade unconsciously.'

'And if we were such a thing as married would you practise your trade in the home?'

'No. I swear it. I never have. Not in my heart.'

'With no one?'

'With no one of your sex.'

'I don't like that word your sex. It sounds as though you were practising your trade.'

'I throw my trade out of that God–damn window into the Grand Canal.'

'There,' she said. 'You see how quickly you practise it?'

'All right,' he said. 'I love you and my trade can gently leave.'

'Let me feel your hand,' she said. 'It's all right. You can put it on the table.'

'Thank you,' the Colonel said.

'Please don't,' she said. 'I wanted to feel it because all last week, every night, or I think nearly every night, I dreamed about it and it was a strange mixed–up dream and I dreamed it was the hand of Our Lord.'

'That's bad. You oughtn't to do that.'

'I know it. That's just what I dreamed.'

'You aren't on the junk, are you?'

'I don't know what you mean and please don't make fun when I tell you something true. I dreamed just as I say.'

'What did the hand do?'

'Nothing. Or maybe that is not true. Mostly it was just a hand.'

'Like this one?' The Colonel asked, looking at the mis–shapen hand with distaste and remembering the two times that had made it that way.

'Not like. It was that one. May I touch it carefully with my fingers if it does not hurt?'

'It does not hurt. Where it hurts is in the head, the legs and the feet. I don't believe there's any sensation in that hand.'

'You're wrong,' she said. 'Richard. There is very much sensation in that hand.'

'I don't like to look at it much. You don't think we could skip it?'

'Of course. But you don't have to dream about it.'

'No. I have other dreams.'

'Yes. I can imagine. But I dream lately about this hand. Now that I have touched it carefully, we can talk about funny things if you like. What is there funny we should talk about?'

'Let's look at the people and discuss them.'

'That's lovely,' she said. 'And we won't do it with malice. Only with our best wit. Yours and mine.'

'Good,' the Colonel said. 'Waiter, Ancora due Martini .'

He did not like to call for Montgomerys in a tone that could be overheard because there were two obvious Britishers at the next table.

The male might have been wounded, the Colonel thought, although, from his looks, it seems unlikely. But God help me to avoid brutality. And look at Renata's eyes, he thought. They are probably the most beautiful of all the beautiful things she has with the longest honest lashes I have ever seen and she never uses them for anything except to look at you honestly and straight. What a damn wonderful girl and what am I doing here anyway? It is wicked. She is your last and true and only love, he thought, and that's not evil. It is only unfortunate. No, he thought, it is damned fortunate and you are very fortunate.

They sat at a small table in the corner of the room and on their right there were four women at a larger table. One of the women was in mourning; a mourning so theatrical that it reminded the Colonel of the Lady Diana Manners playing the nun in Max Reinhardt's 'The Miracle'. This woman had an attractive, plump, naturally gay face and her mourning was incongruous.

At the table there was another woman who had hair three times as white as hair can be, the Colonel thought she, also, had a pleasant face. There were two other women whose faces meant nothing to the Colonel.

'Are they lesbians?' he asked the girl.

'I do not know,' she said. 'They are all very nice people.'

'I should say they are lesbians. But maybe they are just good friends. Maybe they are both. It means nothing to me and it was not a criticism.'

'You are nice when you are gentle.'

'Do you suppose the word gentleman derives from a man who is gentle?'

'I do not know.' the girl said, and she ran her fingers very lightly over the scarred hand. 'But I love you when you are gentle.'

'I'll try very hard to be gentle,' the Colonel said. 'Who do you suppose that son of a bitch is at the table beyond them?'

'You don't stay gentle very long,' the girl said. 'Let us ask Ettore.'

They looked at the man at the third table. He had a strange face like an over–enlarged, disappointed weasel or ferret. It looked as pock–marked and as blemished as the mountains of the moon seen through a cheap telescope and, the Colonel thought, it looked like Goebbels's face, if Herr Goebbels had ever been in a plane that burned and not been able to bale out before the fire reached him.