Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

Enrique smiled in the dark. It was time someone should be coming now.

After the siren on the recorded announcements came a crying baby which the announcer said would be satisfied with Malta-Malta, and then there was a motor horn and a customer who demanded green gas. “Don’t tell me any stories. I asked for green gas. More economical, more mileage. The best.”

Enrique knew all the advertisements by heart. They had not changed in the fifteen months that he had been away at war; they must still be using the same discs in the broadcasting station, and still the siren had deceived him and given him that thin, quick prickle across the scalp that was as definite a reaction to danger as a bird dog stiffening to the warm scent of quail.

He had not had that prickle when he started. Danger and the fear of it had once made him feel empty in his stomach. They had made him feel weak as you are weak with a fever, and he had known the inability to move; when you must force movement forward by legs that feel as dead as though they were asleep. That was all gone now, and he did without difficulty whatever he should do. The prickling was all that remained of the vast capacity for fear some brave men start with. It was his only remaining reaction to danger except for the perspiring which, he knew, he would always have, and now it served as a warning and nothing more.

As he stood, looking out at the tree where the man with the straw hat sat now, on the curb, a stone fell on the tiled floor of the porch. Enrique looked for it against the wall but did not find it. He passed his hands under the cot but it was not there. As he knelt, another pebble fell on the tiled floor, bounced and rolled into the corner toward the side of the house and into the street. Enrique picked it up. It was a smooth-feeling ordinary pebble and he put it in his pocket and went inside the house and down the stairs to the back door.

He stood to one side of the door and took the Colt out of the holster and held it, heavy in his right hand.

“The victory,” he said very quietly in Spanish, his mouth disdaining the word, and shifted softly on his bare feet to the other side of the door.

“To those who earn it,” someone said outside the door. It was a woman’s voice, giving the second half of the password, and it spoke quickly and unsteadily.

Enrique drew back the double bolt on the door and opened it with his left hand, the Colt still in his right.

There was a girl there in the dark, holding a basket. She wore a handkerchief over her head.

“Hello,” he said and shut the door and bolted it. He could hear her breathing in the dark. He took the basket from her and patted her shoulder.

“Enrique,” she said, and he could not see the way her eyes were shining nor the look on her face.

“Come upstairs,” he said. “There is someone watching the front of the house. Did he see you?”

“No,” she said. “I came across the vacant lot.”

“I will show him to you. Come up to the porch.”

They went up the stairs, Enrique carrying the basket. He put it down by the bed and walked to the edge of the porch and looked. The Negro who wore the narrow-brimmed flat-topped straw hat was gone.

“So,” Enrique said quietly.

“So what?” asked the girl, holding his arm now and looking out.

“So he is gone. What is there to eat?”

“I am sorry you were here alone all day” she said. “It was so stupid that I had to wait until it was dark to come. I have wanted to come all day.”

“It was stupid to be here at all. They brought me here from the boat before daylight and left me, with a password and nothing to eat, in a house that is watched. You cannot eat a password. I should not be put in a house that is being watched for other reasons. It is very Cuban. But at least, in the old days we ate. How are you, Maria?”

In the dark she kissed him, hard, on the mouth. He felt the tight-pressed fullness of her lips and the way her body shivered against his and then came the stab of white pain in the small of his back.

“Ayee! Be careful.”

“What is it?”

“The back.”

“What of the back? Is it a wound?”

“You should see it,” he said.

“Can I see it now?”

“Afterwards. We must eat and get out of here. What have they stored here?”

“Too many things. Things left over from the failure of April. Things kept for the future.”

“The long-distant future,” he said. “Did they know it was watched?”

“I am sure not.”

“What is there?”

“There are some rifles in cases. There are boxes of ammunition.”

“Everything should be moved tonight.” His mouth was full. “There will be years of work before we will need this again.”

“Do you like the escabeche ?”

“It’s very good; sit here close.”

“Enrique,” she said, sitting tight against him. She put a hand on his thigh and with the other she stroked the back of his neck. “My Enrique.”

“Touch me carefully,” he said, eating. “The back is bad.”

“Are you happy to be back from the war?”

“I have not thought about it,” he said.

“Enrique, how is Chucho?”

“Dead at Lérida.”

“Felipe?”

“Dead. Also at Lérida.”

“And Arturo?”

“Dead at Teruel.”

“And Vicente?” she asked in a flat voice, her two hands folded on his thigh now.

“Dead. At the attack across the road at Celadas.”

“Vicente is my brother.” She sat stiff and alone now, her hands away from him.

“I know,” said Enrique. He went on eating.

“He is my only brother.”

“I thought you knew,” said Enrique.

“I did not know and he is my brother.”

“I am sorry, Maria. I should have said it another way.”

“And he is dead? You know he is dead? It is not just a report?”

“Listen. Rogello, Basilio, Esteban, Fel and I are alive. The others are dead.”

“All?”

“All,” said Enrique.

“I cannot stand it,” said Maria. “Please, I cannot stand it.”

“It does no good to discuss it. They are dead.”

“But it is not only that Vicente is my brother. I can give up my brother. It is the flower of our party.”

“Yes. The flower of the party.”

“It is not worth it. It has destroyed the best.”

“Yes. It is worth it.”

“How can you say that? That is criminal.”

“No. It is worth it.”

She was crying now and Enrique went on eating. “Don’t cry,” he said. “The thing to do is to think how we can work to take their places.”

“But he is my brother. Don’ you uderstand? My brother .”

“We are all brothers. Some are dead and others still live. They send us home now, so there will be some left. Otherwise there would be none. Now we must work.”

“But why were they all killed?”

“We were with an attack division. You are either killed or wounded. We others have been wounded.”

“How was Vicente killed?”

“He was crossing the road when he was struck by machine-gun fire from a farmhouse on the right. The road was enfiladed from that house.”

“Were you there?”

“Yes. I had the first company. We were on his right. We took the house but it took some time. They had three machine guns there. Two in the house, one in the stable. It was difficult to approach. We had to get a tank up to put fire on the window before we could rush the last gun. I lost eight men. It was too many.”

“And where was that?”

“Celadas.”

“I never heard of it.”

“No,” said Enrique. “The operation was not a success. No one will ever hear of it. That was where Vicente and Ignacio were killed.”

“And you say such things are justified? That men like that should die in failures in a foreign country?”