Ernest Hemingway - Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“I’m awfully glad that I love you.”

“See?” she said. “It isn’t hard.”

“I really love you.”

“I thought maybe you would. I mean I hoped you would.”

“I do.” He held her very close and tight. “I really love you. Do you hear me?”

It was true, too, a thing which surprised him greatly, especially when he found that it was still true in the morning.

They didn’t leave the next morning. Helena was still sleeping when Roger woke and he watched her sleeping, her hair spread over the pillow, swept up from her neck and swung to one side, her lovely brown face, the eyes and the lips closed looking even more beautiful than when she was awake. He noticed her eyelids were pale in the tanned face and how the long lashes lay, the sweetness of her lips, quiet now like a child’s asleep, and how her breasts showed under the sheet she had pulled up over her in the night. He thought he shouldn’t wake her and he was afraid if he kissed her it might, so he dressed and walked down into the village, feeling hollow and hungry and happy, smelling the early morning smells and hearing and seeing the birds and feeling and smelling the breeze that still blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, down to the other restaurant a block beyond the Green Lantern. It was really a lunch counter and he sat on a stool and ordered coffee with milk and a fried ham and egg sandwich on rye bread. There was a midnight edition of the Miami Herald on the counter that some trucker had left and he read about the military rebellion in Spain while he ate the sandwich and drank the coffee. He felt the egg spurt in the rye bread as his teeth went through the bread, the slice of dill pickle, the egg and the ham, and he smelled them all and the good early morning coffee smell as he lifted the cup.

“They’re having plenty of trouble over there aren’t they,” the man behind the counter said to him. He was an elderly man with his face tanned to the line of the sweatband of his hat and freckled dead white above that. Roger saw he had a thin, mean cracker mouth and he wore steel-rimmed glasses.

“Plenty,” Roger agreed.

“All those European countries are the same,” the man said. “Trouble after trouble.”

“I’ll take another cup of coffee,” Roger said. He would let this one cool while he read the paper.

“When they get to the bottom of it they’ll find the Pope there.” The man drew the coffee and put the pot of milk by it.

Roger looked up interestedly as he poured the milk into the cup.

“Three men at the bottom of everything,” the man told him. “The Pope, Herben Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Roger relaxed. The man went on to explain the interlocking interests of these three and Roger listened happily. America was a wonderful place he thought. Imagine buying a copy of Bouvard et Pécuchet when you could get this free with your breakfast. You are getting something else with the newspaper, he thought. But in the meantime there is this.

“What about the Jews?” he asked finally. “Where do they come in?”

“The Jews are a thing of the past,” the man behind the counter told him. “Henry Ford put them out of business when he published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion .”

“Do you think they’re through?”

“Not a doubt of it, fella,” the man said. “You’ve seen the last of them.”

“That surprises me,” Roger said.

“Let me tell you something else,” the man leaned forward. “Some day old Henry will get the Pope the same way. He’ll get him just like he got Wall Street.”

“Did he get Wall Street?”

“Oh boy,” the man said. “They’re through.”

“Henry must be going good.”

“Henry? You really said something then. Henry’s the man of the ages.”

“What about Hitler?”

“Hitler’s a man of his word.”

“What about the Russians?”

“You’ve asked the right man that question. Let the Russian bear stay in his own backyard.”

“Well that pretty well fixes things up,” Roger got up.

“Things look good,” the man behind the counter said. “I’m an optimist. Once old Henry tackles the Pope you’ll see all three of them crumble.”

“What papers do you read?”

“Any of them,” the man said. “But I don’t get my political views there. I think things out for myself.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Forty-five cents.”

“It was a first class breakfast.”

“Come again,” the man said and picked up the paper from where Roger had laid it on the counter. He’s going to figure some more things out for himself, Roger thought.

Roger walked back to the tourist camp, buying a later edition of the Miami Herald at the drugstore. He also bought some razor blades, a tube of mentholated shaving cream, some Dentyne chewing gum, a bottle of Listerine and an alarm clock.

When he arrived at the cabin and opened the door quietly and put his package on the table beside the thermos jug, the enameled cups, the brown paper bag full of White Rock bottles, and the two bottles of Regal beer they had forgotten to drink, Helena was still asleep. He sat in the chair and read the paper and watched her sleep. The sun was high enough so that it did not shine on her face and the breeze came in the other window, blowing across her as she slept without stirring.

Roger read the paper trying to figure out from the various bulletins what had happened, really, and how it was going. She might as well sleep, he thought. We better get whatever there is each day now and as much and as well as we can because it’s started now. It came quicker than I thought it would. I do not have to go yet and we can have a while. Either it will be over right away and the Government will put it down or there will be plenty of time. If I had not had these two months with the kids I would have been over there for it. I’d rather have been with the kids, he thought. It’s too late to go now. It would probably be over before I would get there. Anyway there is going to be plenty of it from now on. There is going to be plenty of it for us all the rest of our lives. Plenty of it. Too damned much of it. I’ve had a wonderful time this summer with Tom and the kids and now I’ve got this girl and I’ll see how long my conscience holds out and when I have to go I’ll go to it and not worry about it until then. This is the start all right. Once it starts there isn’t going to be any end to it. I don’t see any end until we destroy them, there and here and everywhere. I don’t see any end to it ever, he thought. Not for us anyway. But maybe they will win this first one in a hurry, he thought, and I won’t have to go to this one.

The thing had come that he had expected and known would come and that he had waited all one fall for in Madrid and he was already making excuses not to go to it. Spending the time he had with the children had been a valid excuse and he knew nothing had been planned in Spain until later. But now it had come and what was he doing? He was convincing himself there was no need for him to go. It is liable all to be over before I can get there, he thought. There is going to be plenty of time.

There were other things that held him back too that he did not understand yet. They were the weaknesses that developed alongside his strengths like the crevices in a glacier under its covering of snow, or, if that is too pompous a comparison, like streaks of fat between muscles. These weaknesses were a part of the strengths unless they grew to dominate them; but they were mostly hidden and he did not understand them, nor know their uses. He did know, though, that this thing had come that he must go to and aid in every way he could, and yet he found varied reasons why he did not have to go.