Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

That was close to a thousand dollars then.

“Good,” I said, all the fine inner quiet gone now and the hollow that gambling makes come back again. “Who’s matching who?”

“I’ll match you.”

We shook the heavy five-peseta pieces in our cupped hands; then each man laid his coin on the back of his left hand, each coin covered with the right hand.

“What’s yours?” he asked.

I uncovered the big silver piece with the profile of Alfonso XIII as a baby showing.

“Heads,” I said.

“Take these damned things and be a good man and buy me a drink.” He emptied out the notecase. “You wouldn’t like to buy a good Purdey gun would you?”

“No,” I said. “But look, Luis, if you need some money—”

I was holding the stiffly folded, shiny-heavy-paper, green thousandpeseta notes toward him.

“Don’t be silly, Enrique,” he said. “We’ve been gambling, haven’t we?”

“Yes. But we know each other quite well.”

“Not that well.”

“Right,” I said. “You’re the judge of that. Then what will you drink?”

“What about a gin and tonic? That’s a marvelous drink you know.”

So we had a gin and tonic and I felt very badly to have broken him and I felt awfully good to have won the money, and a gin and tonic never tasted better to me in all my life. There is no use to lie about these things or pretend you do not enjoy winning; but this boy Luis Delgado was a very pretty gambler.

“I don’t think if people gambled for what they could afford it would be very interesting. Do you, Enrique?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been able to afford it.”

“Don’t be silly. You have lots of money.”

“No I haven’t,” I said. “Really.”

“Oh, everyone has money,” he said. “It’s just a question of selling something or other to get hold of it.”

“I don’t have much. Really.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. I’ve never known an American who wasn’t rich.”

I guess that was the truth all right. He wouldn’t have met them at the Ritz bar or at Chicote’s either in those days. And now he was back in Chicote’s and all the Americans he would meet there now were the kind he would never have met; except me, and I was a mistake. But I would have given plenty not to have seen him in there.

Still, if he wanted to do an absolutely damn fool thing like that it was his own business. But as I looked at the table and remembered the old days I felt badly about him and I felt very badly too that I had given the waiter the number of the counterespionage bureau in Seguridad headquarters. He could have had Seguridad by simply asking on the telephone. But I had given him the shortest cut to having Delgado arrested in one of those excesses of impartiality, righteousness and Pontius Pilatry, and the always-dirty desire to see how people act under an emotional conflict, that makes writers such attractive friends.

The waiter came over.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I would never denounce him myself,” I said, now trying to undo for myself what I had done with the number. “But I am a foreigner and it is your war and your problem.”

“But you are with us.”

“Absolutely and always. But it does not include denouncing old friends.”

“But for me?”

“For you it is different.”

I knew this was true and there was nothing else to say, only I wished I had never heard of any of it.

My curiosity as to how people would act in this case had been long ago, and shamefully, satisfied. I turned to John and did not look at the table where Luis Delgado was sitting. I knew he had been flying with the fascists for over a year, and here he was, in a loyalist uniform, talking to three young loyalist flyers of the last crop that had been trained in France.

None of those new kids would know him and I wondered whether he had come to try to steal a plane or for what. Whatever he was there for, he was a fool to come to Chicote’s now.

“How do you feel, John?” I asked.

“Feel good,” said John. “Is a good drink hokay. Makes me feel little bit drunk maybe. Is a good for the buzzing in the head.”

The waiter came over. He was very excited.

“I have denounced him,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “now you haven’t any problem.”

“No,” he said proudly. “I have denounced him. They are on their way now to get him.”

“Let’s go,” I said to John. “There is going to be some trouble here.”

“Is best go then,” said John. “Is a plenty trouble always come, even if you do best to avoid. How much we owe?”

“You aren’t going to stay?” the waiter asked.

“No.”

“But you gave me the telephone number.”

“I know it. You get to know too many telephone numbers if you stay around in this town.”

“But it was my duty.”

“Yes. Why not? Duty is a very strong thing.”

“But now?”

“Well, you felt good about it just now, didn’t you? Maybe you will feel good about it again. Maybe you will get to like it.”

“You have forgotten the package,” the waiter said. He handed me the meat which was wrapped in two envelopes which had brought copies of the Spur to the piles of magazines which accumulated in one of the office rooms of the Embassy.

“I understand,” I said to the waiter. “Truly.”

“He was an old client and a good client. Also I have never denounced anyone before. I did not denounce for pleasure.”

“Also I should not speak cynically or brutally. Tell him that I denounced him. He hates me anyway by now for differences in politics. He’d feel badly if he knew it was you.”

“No. Each man must take his responsibility. But you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. Then lied. “I understand and I approve.” You have to lie very often in a war and when you have to lie you should do it quickly and as well as you can.

We shook hands and I went out the door with John. I looked back at the table where Luis Delgado sat as I went out. He had another gin and tonic in front of him and everyone at the table was laughing at something he had said. He had a very gay, brown face, and shooter’s eyes, and I wondered what he was passing himself off as.

He was a fool to go to Chicote’s. But that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do in order to be able to boast of it when he was back with his own people.

As we went out of the door and turned to walk up the street, a big Seguridad car drew up in front of Chicote’s and eight men got out of it. Six with submachine guns took up positions outside the door. Two in plain clothes went inside. A man asked us for our papers and when I said, “Foreigners,” he said to go along; that it was all right.

In the dark going up the Gran Via there was much new broken glass on the sidewalk and much rubble under foot from the shelling. The air was still smoky and all up the street it smelled of high explosive and blasted granite.

“Where you go eat?” asked John.

“I have some meat for all of us, and we can cook it in the room.”

“I cook it,” said John. “I cook good. I remember one time when I cook on ship—”

“It will be pretty tough,” I said. “It’s just been freshly butchered.”

“Oh no,” said John. “Is a no such thing as a touch meat in a war.”

People were hurrying by in the dark on their way home from the cinemas where they had stayed until the shelling was over.

“What’s a matter that fascist he come to that café where they know him?”

“He was crazy to do it.”

“Is a trouble with a war,” John said. “Is a too many people crazy.”

“John,” I said, “I think you’ve got something there.”

Back at the hotel we went in the door past the sandbags piled to protect the porter’s desk and I asked for the key, but the porter said there were two comrades upstairs in the room taking a bath. He had given them the keys.