Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“That’s not my fault,” the waiter said. “It’s too late. There isn’t anything more. Why doesn’t the comrade eat with his unit? The army has plenty of food.”

“I asked him to eat with me.”

“You should have said something about it. It’s too late now. We are not serving anything any more.”

“Get the head waiter.”

The headwaiter said the cook had gone home and there was no fire in the kitchen. He went away. They were angry because we had sent the bad wine back.

“The hell with it,” said Al. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“There’s no place you can eat at this hour. They’ve got food. I’ll just have to go over and suck up to the headwaiter and give him some more money.”

I went over and did just that and the sullen waiter brought a plate of cold sliced meats, then half a spiny lobster with mayonnaise, and a salad of lettuce and lentils. The headwaiter sold this out of his private stock which he was holding out either to take home, or sell to late comers.

“Cost you much?” Al asked.

“No,” I lied.

“I’ll bet it did,” he said. “I’ll fix up with you when I get paid.”

“What do you get now?”

“I don’t know yet. It was ten pesetas a day but they’ve raised it now I’m an officer. But we haven’t got it yet and I haven’t asked.”

“Comrade,” I called the waiter. He came over, still angry that the headwaiter had gone over his head and served Al. “Bring another bottle of wine, please.”

“What kind?”

“Any that is not too old so that the red is faded.”

“It’s all the same.”

I said the equivalent of like hell it is in Spanish, and the waiter brought over a bottle of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1906 that was just as good as the last claret we had was rotten.

“Boy that’s wine,” Al said. “What did you tell him to get that?”

“Nothing. He just made a lucky draw out of the bin.”

“Most of that stuff from the palace stinks.”

“It’s too old. This is a hell of a climate on wine.”

“There’s that wise comrade,” Al nodded across at another table.

The little man with the thick glasses that had talked to us about Largo Caballero was talking with some people I knew were very big shots indeed.

“I guess he’s a big shot,” I said.

“When they’re high enough up they don’t give a damn what they say. But I wish he would have waited until after tomorrow. It’s kind of spoiled tomorrow for me.”

I filled his glass.

“What he said sounded pretty sensible,” Al went on. “I’ve been thinking it over. But my duty is to do what I’m ordered to do.”

“Don’t worry about it and get some sleep.”

“I’m going to get in that game again if you’ll let me take a thousand pesetas,” Al said. “I’ve got a lot more than that coming to me and I’ll give you an order on my pay.”

“I don’t want any order. You can pay me when you get it.”

“I don’t think I’m going to draw it,” Al said. “I certainly sound wet, don’t I? And I know gambling’s bohemianism too. But in a game like that is the only time I don’t think about tomorrow.”

“Did you like that Manolita girl? She liked you.”

“She’s got eyes like a snake.”

“She’s not a bad girl. She’s friendly and she’s all right.”

“I don’t want any girl. I want to get back in that crap game.”

Down the table Manolita was laughing at something the new Englishman had said in Spanish. Most of the people had left the table.

“Let’s finish the wine and go,” Al said. “Don’t you want to get in that game?”

“I’ll watch you for a while,” I said and called the waiter over to bring us the bill.

“Where you go?” Manolita called down the table.

“To the room.”

“We come by later on,” she said. “This man is very funny.”

“She is making most awful sport of me,” the Englishman said. “She picks up on my errors in Spanish. I say, doesn’t leche mean milk?”

“That’s one interpretation of it.”

“ Does it mean something beastly too?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

“You know it is a beastly language,” he said. “Now Manolita, stop pulling my leg. I say stop it.”

“I’m not pulling your leg,” Manolita laughed. “I never touched your leg. I am just laughing about the leche .”

“But it does mean milk. Didn’t you just hear Edwin Henry say so?”

Manolita started to laugh again and we got up to go.

“He’s a silly piece of work,” Al said. “I’d almost like to take her away because he’s so silly.”

“You can never tell about an Englishman,” I said. It was such a profound remark that I knew we had ordered too many bottles. Outside, in the street, it was turning cold and in the moonlight the clouds were passing very big and white across the wide, building-sided canyon of the Gran Via and we walked up the sidewalk with the day’s fresh shell holes neatly cut in the cement, their rubble still not swept away, on up the rise of the hill toward the Plaza Callao where the Florida Hotel faced down the other little hill where the wide street ran that ended at the front.

We went past the two guards in the dark outside the door of the hotel and listened a minute in the doorway as the shooting down the street strengthened into a roll of firing, then dropped off.

“If it keeps up I guess I ought to go down,” Al said listening.

“That wasn’t anything,” I said. “Anyway that was off to the left by Carabanchel.”

“It sounded straight down in the Campo.”

“That’s the way the sound throws here at night. It always fools you.”

“They aren’t going to counterattack us tonight,” Al said. “When they’ve got those positions and we are up that creek they aren’t going to leave their positions to try to kick us out of that creek.”

“What creek?”

“You know the name of that creek.”

“Oh. That creek.”

“Yeah. Up that creek without a paddle.”

“Come on inside. You didn’t have to listen to that firing. That’s the way it is every night.”

We went inside, crossed the lobby, passing the night watchman at the concierge’s desk and the night watchman got up and went with us to the elevator. He pushed a button and the elevator came down. In it was a man with a white curly sheep’s wool jacket, the wool worn inside, a pink bald head, and a pink, angry face. He had six bottles of champagne under his arms and in his hands and he said, “What the hell’s the idea of bringing the elevator down?”

“You’ve been riding in the elevator for an hour,” the night watchman said.

“I can’t help it,” said the wooly jacket man. Then to me, “Where’s Frank?”

“Frank who?”

“You know Frank,” he said. “Come on, help me with this elevator.”

“You’re drunk,” I said to him. “Come on, skip it and let us get upstairs.”

“So would you be drunk,” said the white woolly jacket man. “So would you be drunk comrade old comrade. Listen, where’s Frank?”

“Where do you think he is?”

“In this fellow Henry’s room where the crap game is.”

“Come on with us,” I said. “Don’t fool with those buttons. That’s why you stop it all the time.”

“I can fly anything,” said the woolly jacket man. “And I can fly this old elevator. Want me to stunt it?”

“Skip it,” Al said to him. “You’re drunk. We want to get to the crap game.”

“Who are you? I’ll hit you with a bottle full of champagne wine.”

“Try it,” said Al. “I’d like to cool you, you rummy fake Santa Claus.”

“A rummy fake Santa Claus,” said the bald man. “A rummy fake Santa Claus. And that’s the thanks of the Republic.”