Mirage Massage

[Unregistered]

Warm essential oils,gliding hands and exotic scents...A sensory experience designed to ease and unknot those tense,aching muscles...A clean comfortable studio will put you at ease as you lie back and enjoy a full body immersion performed by the magical fingers of a gorgeous,young Asian RMT...Mirage Massage Studio...Now pleased to offer a 90 minute deep tissue massage package for only 120 dollars..You will leave wondering why you waited so long to visit

gorgeous,young girls sex 90 min 120, sooooo good !

 

[Unregistered]

This morning I went to Mirage to see what it is going on. I had a one hour massage. At about 35 minutes,I asked for a "happy ending" and was told flatly,no, I went as far as offering $150 but again was told in an angry tone,no.The girl who massaged me was pretty,about 25 years old and was wearing leggings and a shirt.She told me she is Tina.Even though I didn't get any extras,I have to say that the massage was really excellent.I would go back for the massage for sure but just wouldn't expect anything else.

 

[Unregistered]

This morning I went to Mirage to see what it is going on. I had a one hour massage. At about 35 minutes,I asked for a "happy ending" and was told flatly,no, I went as far as offering $150 but again was told in an angry tone,no.The girl who massaged me was pretty,about 25 years old and was wearing leggings and a shirt.She told me she is Tina.Even though I didn't get any extras,I have to say that the massage was really excellent.I would go back for the massage for sure but just wouldn't expect anything else.

Tina is the same girl who gave me a bbbj, apparently she told me that they're being investigated so she gotto lay low for awhile..i was told to come back december if i'm still looking for nice extras.

 

[BOBC]

Tina is the same girl who gave me a bbbj, apparently she told me that they're being investigated so she gotto lay low for awhile..i was told to come back december if i'm still looking for nice extras.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You're fucking piece of shit！$120 BBBJ? [/FONT]

 

[Unregistered]

You're fucking piece of shit！$120 BBBJ?

BBBJ + FS and massage

 

[Unregistered]

Lots mental problems people here.

 

[Unregistered]

i face fucked tina like a champ..MMmm then i blew inside her pretty mouth. She swallowed it..good girl.

 

[Unregistered]

"Listen, Robert, dear. Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember any conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature. We must all help young writers. Don't you think so, Jake? But you're not a young writer. Are you, Robert? You're thirty-four. Still, I suppose that is young for a great writer. Look at Hardy. Look at Anatole France. He just died a little while ago. Robert doesn't think he's any good, though. Some of his French friends told him. He doesn't read French very well himself. He wasn't a good writer like you are, was he, Robert? Do you think he ever had to go and look for material? What do you suppose he said to his mistresses when he wouldn't marry them? I wonder if he cried, too? Oh, I've just thought of something." She put her gloved hand up to her lips. "I know the real reason why Robert won't marry me, Jake. It's just come to me. They've sent it to me in a vision in the Café Select. Isn't it mystic? Some day they'll put a tablet up. Like at Lourdes. Do you want to hear, Robert? I'll tell you. It's so simple. I wonder why I never thought about it. Why, you see, Robert's always wanted to have a mistress, and if he doesn't marry me, why, then he's had one. She was his mistress for over two years. See how it is? And if he marries me, like he's always promised he would, that would be the end of all the romance. Don't you think that's bright of me to figure that out? It's true, too. Look at him and see if it's not. Where are you going, Jake?"
"I've got to go in and see Harvey Stone a minute."
Cohn looked up as I went in. His face was white. Why did he sit there? Why did he keep on taking it like that?
As I stood against the bar looking out I could see them through the window. Frances was talking on to him, smiling brightly, looking into his face each time she asked: "Isn't it so, Robert?" Or maybe she did not ask that now. Perhaps she said something else. I told the barman I did not want anything to drink and went out through the side door. As I went out the door I looked back through the two thicknesses of glass and saw them sitting there. She was still talking to him. I went down a side street to the Boulevard Raspail. A taxi came along and I got in and gave the driver the address of my flat.

 

[Unregistered]

As I started up the stairs the concierge knocked on the glass of the door of her lodge, and as I stopped she came out. She had some letters and a telegram.
"Here is the post. And there was a lady here to see you."
"Did she leave a card?"
"No. She was with a gentleman. It was the one who was here last night. In the end I find she is very nice."
"Was she with a friend of mine?"
"I don't know. He was never here before. He was very large. Very, very large. She was very nice. Very, very nice. Last night she was, perhaps, a little--" She put her head on one hand and rocked it up and down. "I'll speak perfectly frankly, Monsieur Barnes. Last night I found her not so gentille. Last night I formed another idea of her. But listen to what I tell you. She is très, très gentille. She is of very good family. It is a thing you can see."
"They did not leave any word?"
"Yes. They said they would be back in an hour."
"Send them up when they come."
"Yes, Monsieur Barnes. And that lady, that lady there is some one. An eccentric, perhaps, but quelqu'une, quelqu'une!"
The concierge, before she became a concierge, had owned a drink-selling concession at the Paris race-courses. Her life-work lay in the pelouse, but she kept an eye on the people of the pesage, and she took great pride in telling me which of my guests were well brought up, which were of good family, who were sportsmen, a French word pronounced with the accent on the men. The only trouble was that people who did not fall into any of those three categories were very liable to be told there was no one home, chez Barnes. One of my friends, an extremely underfed-looking painter, who was obviously to Madame Duzinell neither well brought up, of good family, nor a sportsman, wrote me a letter asking if I could get him a pass to get by the concierge so he could come up and see me occasionally in the evenings.
I went up to the flat wondering what Brett had done to the concierge. The wire was a cable from Bill Gorton, saying he was arriving on the _France_. I put the mail on the table, went back to the bedroom, undressed and had a shower. I was rubbing down when I heard the door-bell pull. I put on a bathrobe and slippers and went to the door. It was Brett. Back of her was the count. He was holding a great bunch of roses.
"Hello, darling," said Brett. "Aren't you going to let us in?"
"Come on. I was just bathing."
"Aren't you the fortunate man. Bathing."
"Only a shower. Sit down, Count Mippipopolous. What will you drink?"
"I don't know whether you like flowers, sir," the count said, "but I took the liberty of just bringing these roses."
"Here, give them to me." Brett took them. "Get me some water in this, Jake." I filled the big earthenware jug with water in the kitchen, and Brett put the roses in it, and placed them in the centre of the dining-room table.
"I say. We have had a day."
"You don't remember anything about a date with me at the Crillon?"
"No. Did we have one? I must have been blind."
"You were quite drunk, my dear," said the count.
"Wasn't I, though? And the count's been a brick, absolutely."
"You've got hell's own drag with the concierge now."
"I ought to have. Gave her two hundred francs."
"Don't be a damned fool."
"His," she said, and nodded at the count.
"I thought we ought to give her a little something for last night. It was very late."
"He's wonderful," Brett said. "He remembers everything that's happened."
"So do you, my dear."
"Fancy," said Brett. "Who'd want to? I say, Jake, do we get a drink?"
"You get it while I go in and dress. You know where it is."
"Rather."
While I dressed I heard Brett put down glasses and then a siphon, and then heard them talking. I dressed slowly, sitting on the bed. I felt tired and pretty rotten. Brett came in the room, a glass in her hand, and sat on the bed.
"What's the matter, darling? Do you feel rocky?"
She kissed me coolly on the forehead.
"Oh, Brett, I love you so much."
"Darling," she said. Then: "Do you want me to send him away?"
"No. He's nice."
"I'll send him away."
"No, don't."
"Yes, I'll send him away."
"You can't just like that."
"Can't I, though? You stay here. He's mad about me, I tell you."
She was gone out of the room. I lay face down on the bed. I was having a bad time. I heard them talking but I did not listen. Brett came in and sat on the bed.
"Poor old darling." She stroked my head.
"What did you say to him?" I was lying with my face away from her. I did not want to see her.
"Sent him for champagne. He loves to go for champagne."
Then later: "Do you feel better, darling? Is the head any better?"
"It's better."
"Lie quiet. He's gone to the other side of town."
"Couldn't we live together, Brett? Couldn't we just live together?"
"I don't think so. I'd just _tromper_ you with everybody. You couldn't stand it."
"I stand it now."
"That would be different. It's my fault, Jake. It's the way I'm made."
"Couldn't we go off in the country for a while?"
"It wouldn't be any good. I'll go if you like. But I couldn't live quietly in the country. Not with my own true love."
"I know."
"Isn't it rotten? There isn't any use my telling you I love you."
"You know I love you."
"Let's not talk. Talking's all bilge. I'm going away from you, and then Michael's coming back."
"Why are you going away?"
"Better for you. Better for me."
"When are you going?"
"Soon as I can."
"Where?"
"San Sebastian."
"Can't we go together?"
"No. That would be a hell of an idea after we'd just talked it out."
"We never agreed."
"Oh, you know as well as I do. Don't he obstinate, darling."
"Oh, sure," I said. "I knowyou're right. I'm just low, and when I'm low I talk like a fool."
I sat up, leaned over, found my shoes beside the bed and put them on. I stood up.
"Don't look like that, darling."
"How do you want me to look?"
"Oh, don't be a fool. I'm going away to-morrow."
"To-morrow?"
"Yes. Didn't I say so? I am."
"Let's have a drink, then. The count will be back."
"Yes. He should be back. You know he's extraordinary about buying champagne. It means any amount to him."
We went into the dining-room. I took up the brandy bottle and poured Brett a drink and one for myself. There was a ring at the bell-pull. I went to the door and there was the count. Behind him was the chauffeur carrying a basket of champagne.
"Where should I have him put it, sir?" asked the count.
"In the kitchen," Brett said.
"Put it in there, Henry," the count motioned. "Now go down and get the ice." He stood looking after the basket inside the kitchen door. "I think you'll find that's very good wine," he said. "I know we don't get much of a chance to judge good wine in the States now, but I got this from a friend of mine that's in the business."
"Oh, you always have some one in the trade," Brett said.
"This fellow raises the grapes. He's got thousands of acres of them."
"What's his name?" asked Brett. "Veuve Cliquot?"
"No," said the count. "Mumms. He's a baron."
"Isn't it wonderful," said Brett. "We all have titles. Why haven't you a title, Jake?"
"I assure you, sir," the count put his hand on my arm. "It never does a man any good. Most of the time it costs you money."
"Oh, I don't know. It's damned useful sometimes," Brett said.
"I've never known it to do me any good."
"You haven't used it properly. I've had hell's own amount of credit on mine."
"Do sit down, count," I said. "Let me take that stick."
The count was looking at Brett across the table under the gaslight. She was smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes on the rug. She saw me notice it. "I say, Jake, I don't want to ruin your rugs. Can't you give a chap an ash-tray?"
I found some ash-trays and spread them around. The chauffeur came up with a bucket full of salted ice. "Put two bottles in it, Henry," the count called.
"Anything else, sir?"
"No. Wait down in the car." He turned to Brett and to me. "We'll want to ride out to the Bois for dinner?"
"If you like," Brett said. "I couldn't eat a thing."
"I always like a good meal," said the count.
"Should I bring the wine in, sir?" asked the chauffeur.
"Yes. Bring it in, Henry," said the count. He took out a heavy pigskin cigar-case and offered it to me. "Like to try a real American cigar?"
"Thanks," I said. "I'll finish the cigarette."
He cut off the end of his cigar with a gold cutter he wore on one end of his watch-chain.
"I like a cigar to really draw," said the count. "Half the cigars you smoke don't draw."
He lit the cigar, puffed at it, looking across the table at Brett. "And when you're divorced, Lady Ashley, then you won't have a title."
"No. What a pity."
"No," said the count. "You don't need a title. You got class all over you."
"Thanks. Awfully decent of you."
"I'm not joking you," the count blew a cloud of smoke. "You got the most class of anybody I ever seen. You got it. That's all."
"Nice of you," said Brett. "Mummy would be pleased. Couldn't you write it out, and I'll send it in a letter to her."
"I'd tell her, too," said the count. "I'm not joking you. I never joke people. Joke people and you make enemies. That's what I always say."
"You're right," Brett said. "You're terribly right. I always joke people and I haven't a friend in the world. Except Jake here."
"You don't joke him."
"That's it."
"Do you, now?" asked the count. "Do you joke him?"
Brett looked at me and wrinkled up the corners of her eyes.
"No," she said. "I wouldn't joke him."
"See," said the count. "You don't joke him."
"This is a hell of a dull talk," Brett said. "How about some of that champagne?"
The count reached down and twirled the bottles in the shiny bucket. "It isn't cold, yet. You're always drinking, my dear. Why don't you just talk?"
"I've talked too ruddy much. I've talked myself all out to Jake."
"I should like to hear you really talk, my dear. When you talk to me you never finish your sentences at all."
"Leave 'em for you to finish. Let any one finish them as they like."
"It is a very interesting system," the count reached down and gave the bottles a twirl. "Still I would like to hear you talk some time."
"Isn't he a fool?" Brett asked.
"Now," the count brought up a bottle. "I think this is cool."
I brought a towel and he wiped the bottle dry and held it up. "I like to drink champagne from magnums. The wine is better but it would have been too hard to cool." He held the bottle, looking at it. I put out the glasses.
"I say. You might open it," Brett suggested.
"Yes, my dear. Now I'll open it."
It was amazing champagne.
"I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'
"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste."
Brett's glass was empty.
"You ought to write a book on wines, count," I said.
"Mr. Barnes," answered the count, "all I want out of wines is to enjoy them."
"Let's enjoy a little more of this," Brett pushed her glass forward. The count poured very carefully. "There, my dear. Now you enjoy that slowly, and then you can get drunk."
"Drunk? Drunk?"
"My dear, you are charming when you are drunk."
"Listen to the man."
"Mr. Barnes," the count poured my glass full. "She is the only lady I have ever known who was as charming when she was drunk as when she was sober."
"You haven't been around much, have you?"
"Yes, my dear. I have been around very much. I have been around a very great deal."
"Drink your wine," said Brett. "We've all been around. I dare say Jake here has seen as much as you have."
My dear, I am sure Mr. Barnes has seen a lot. Don t think I don't think so, sir. I have seen a lot, too."
"Of course you have, my dear," Brett said. "I was only ragging."
"I have been in seven wars and four revolutions," the count said.
"Soldiering?" Brett asked.
"Sometimes, my dear. And I have got arrow wounds. Have you ever seen arrow wounds?"
"Let's have a look at them."
The count stood up, unbuttoned his vest, and opened his shirt. He pulled up the undershirt onto his chest and stood, his chest black, and big stomach muscles bulging under the light.
"You see them?"
Below the line where his ribs stopped were two raised white welts. "See on the back where they come out." Above the small of the back were the same two scars, raised as thick as a finger.
"I say. Those are something."
"Clean through."
The count was tucking in his shirt.
"Where did you get those?" I asked.
"In Abyssinia. When I was twenty-one years old."
"What were you doing?" asked Brett. "Were you in the army?"
"I was on a business trip, my dear."
"I told you he was one of us. Didn't I?" Brett turned to me. "I love you, count. You're a darling."
"You make me very happy, my dear. But it isn't true."
"Don't be an ass."
"You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well. Don't you find it like that?"
"Yes. Absolutely."
"I know," said the count. "That is the secret. You must get to know the values."
"Doesn't anything ever happen to your values?" Brett asked.
"No. Not any more."
"Never fall in love?"
"Always," said the count. "I am always in love."
"What does that do to your values?"
"That, too, has got a place in my values."
"You haven't any values. You're dead, that's all."
"No, my dear. You're not right. I'm not dead at all."
We drank three bottles of the champagne and the count left the basket in my kitchen. We dined at a restaurant in the Bois. It was a good dinner. Food had an excellent place in the count's values. So did wine. The count was in fine form during the meal. So was Brett. It was a good party.
"Where would you like to go?" asked the count after dinner. We were the only people left in the restaurant. The two waiters were standing over against the door. They wanted to go home.
"We might go up on the hill," Brett said. "Haven't we had a splendid party?"
The count was beaming. He was very happy.
"You are very nice people," he said. He was smoking a cigar again. "Why don't you get married, you two?"
"We want to lead our own lives," I said.
"We have our careers," Brett said. "Come on. Let's get out of this."
"Have another brandy," the count said.
"Get it on the hill."
"No. Have it here where it is quiet."
"You and your quiet," said Brett. "What is it men feel about quiet?"
"We like it," said the count. "Like you like noise, my dear."
"All right," said Brett. "Let's have one."
"Sommelier!" the count called.
"Yes, sir."
"What is the oldest brandy you have?"
"Eighteen eleven, sir."
"Bring us a bottle."
"I say. Don't be ostentatious. Call him off, Jake."
"Listen, my dear. I get more value for my money in old brandy than in any other antiquities."
"Got many antiquities?"
"I got a houseful."
Finally we went up to Montmartre. Inside Zelli's it was crowded, smoky, and noisy. The music hit you as you went in. Brett and I danced. It was so crowded we could barely move. The nigger drummer waved at Brett. We were caught in the jam, dancing in one place in front of him.
"Hahre you?"
"Great."
"Thaats good."
He was all teeth and lips.
"He's a great friend of mine," Brett said. "Damn good drummer."
The music stopped and we started toward the table where the count sat. Then the music started again and we danced. I looked at the count. He was sitting at the table smoking a cigar. The music stopped again.
"Let's go over."
Brett started toward the table. The music started and again we danced, tight in the crowd.
"You are a rotten dancer, Jake. Michael's the best dancer I know."
"He's splendid."
"He's got his points."
"I like him," I said. "I'm damned fond of him."
"I'm going to marry him," Brett said. "Funny. I haven't thought about him for a week."

 

[Unregistered]

"Don't you write him?"
"Not I. Never write letters."
"I'll bet he writes to you."
"Rather. Damned good letters, too."
"When are you going to get married?"
"How do I know? As soon as we can get the divorce. Michael's trying to get his mother to put up for it."
"Could I help you?"
"Don't be an ass. Michael's people have loads of money."
The music stopped. We walked over to the table. The count stood up.
"Very nice," he said. "You looked very, very nice."
"Don't you dance, count?" I asked.
"No. I'm too old."
"Oh, come off it," Brett said.
"My dear, I would do it if I would enjoy it. I enjoy to watch you dance."
"Splendid," Brett said. "I'll dance again for you some time. I say. What about your little friend, Zizi?"
"Let me tell you. I support that boy, but I don't want to have him around."
"He is rather hard."
"You know I think that boy's got a future. But personally I don't want him around."
"Jake's rather the same way."
"He gives me the willys."
"Well," the count shrugged his shoulders. "About his future you can't ever tell. Anyhow, his father was a great friend of my father."
"Come on. Let's dance," Brett said.
We danced. It was crowded and close.
"Oh, darling," Brett said, "I'm so miserable."
I had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. "You were happy a minute ago."
The drummer shouted: "You can't two time--"
"It's all gone."
"What's the matter?"
"I don't know. I just feel terribly."
". . . . . ." the drummer chanted. Then turned to his sticks.
"Want to go?"
I had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being something repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again.
". . . . . ." the drummer sang softly.
"Let's go," said Brett. "You don't mind."
". . . . . ." the drummer shouted and grinned at Brett.
"All right," I said. We got out from the crowd. Brett went to the dressing-room.
"Brett wants to go," I said to the count. He nodded. "Does she? That's fine. You take the car. I'm going to stay here for a while, Mr. Barnes."
We shook hands.
"It was a wonderful time," I said. "I wish you would let me get this." I took a note out of my pocket.
"Mr. Barnes, don't be ridiculous," the count said.
Brett came over with her wrap on. She kissed the count and put her hand on his shoulder to keep him from standing up. As we went out the door I looked back and there were three girls at his table. We got into the big car. Brett gave the chauffeur the address of her hotel.
"No, don't come up," she said at the hotel. She had rung and the door was unlatched.
"Really?"
"No. Please."
"Good night, Brett," I said. "I'm sorry you feel rotten."
"Good night, Jake. Good night, darling. I won't see you again." We kissed standing at the door. She pushed me away. We kissed again. "Oh, don't!" Brett said.
She turned quickly and went into the hotel. The chauffeur drove me around to my flat. I gave him twenty francs and he touched his cap and said: "Good night, sir," and drove off. I rang the bell. The door opened and I went up-stairs and went to bed.

 

[Unregistered]

I did not see Brett again until she came back from San Sebastian. One card came from her from there. It had a picture of the Concha, and said: "Darling. Very quiet and healthy. Love to all the chaps. BRETT."
Nor did I see Robert Cohn again. I heard Frances had left for England and I had a note from Cohn saying he was going out in the country for a couple of weeks, he did not know where, but that he wanted to hold me to the fishing-trip in Spain we had talked about last winter. I could reach him always, he wrote, through his bankers.
Brett was gone, I was not bothered by Cohn's troubles, I rather enjoyed not having to play tennis, there was plenty of work to do, I went often to the races, dined with friends, and put in some extra time at the office getting things ahead so I could leave it in charge of my secretary when Bill Gorton and I should shove off to Spain the end of June. Bill Gorton arrived, put up a couple of days at the flat and went off to Vienna. He was very cheerful and said the States were wonderful. New York was wonderful. There had been a grand theatrical season and a whole crop of great young light heavyweights. Any one of them was a good prospect to grow up, put on weight and trim Dempsey. Bill was very happy. He had made a lot of money on his last book, and was going to make a lot more. We had a good time while he was in Paris, and then he went off to Vienna. He was coming back in three weeks and we would leave for Spain to get in some fishing and go to the fiesta at Pamplona. He wrote that Vienna was wonderful. Then a card from Budapest: "Jake, Budapest is wonderful." Then I got a wire: "Back on Monday."
Monday evening he turned up at the flat. I heard his taxi stop and went to the window and called to him; he waved and started up-stairs carrying his bags. I met him on the stairs, and took one of the bags.
"Well," I said, "I hear you had a wonderful trip."
"Wonderful," he said. "Budapest is absolutely wonderful."
"How about Vienna?"
"Not so good, Jake. Not so good. It seemed better than it was."
"How do you mean?" I was getting glasses and a siphon.
"Tight, Jake. I was tight."
"That's strange. Better have a drink."
Bill rubbed his forehead. "Remarkable thing," he said. "Don't know how it happened. Suddenly it happened."
"Last long?"
"Four days, Jake. Lasted just four days."
"Where did you go?"
"Don't remember. Wrote you a post-card. Remember that perfectly."
"Do anything else?"
"Not so sure. Possible."
"Go on. Tell me about it."
"Can't remember. Tell you anything I could remember."
"Go on. Take that drink and remember."
"Might remember a little," Bill said. "Remember something about a prize-fight. Enormous Vienna prize-fight. Had a nigger in it. Remember the nigger perfectly."
"Go on."
"Wonderful nigger. Looked like Tiger Flowers, only four times as big. All of a sudden everybody started to throw things. Not me. Nigger'd just knocked local boy down. Nigger put up his glove. Wanted to make a speech. Awful noble-looking nigger. Started to make a speech. Then local white boy hit him. Then he knocked white boy cold. Then everybody commenced to throw chairs. Nigger went home with us in our car. Couldn't get his clothes. Wore my coat. Remember the whole thing now. Big sporting evening."
"What happened?"
"Loaned the nigger some clothes and went around with him to try and get his money. Claimed nigger owed them money on account of wrecking hall. Wonder who translated? Was it me?"
"Probably it wasn't you."
"You're right. Wasn't me at all. Was another fellow. Think we called him the local Harvard man. Remember him now. Studying music."
"How'd you come out?"
"Not so good, Jake. Injustice everywhere. Promoter claimed nigger promised let local boy stay. Claimed nigger violated contract. Can't knock out Vienna boy in Vienna. 'My God, Mister Gorton,' said nigger, 'I didn't do nothing in there for forty minutes but try and let him stay. That white boy musta ruptured himself swinging at me. I never did hit him.' "
"Did you get any money?"
"No money, Jake. All we could get was nigger's clothes. Somebody took his watch, too. Splendid nigger. Big mistake to have come to Vienna. Not so good, Jake. Not so good."
"What became of the nigger?"
"Went back to Cologne. Lives there. Married. Got a family. Going to write me a letter and send me the money I loaned him. Wonderful nigger. Hope I gave him the right address."
"You probably did."
"Well, anyway, let's eat," said Bill. "Unless you want me to tell you some more travel stories."
"Go on."
"Let's eat."
We went down-stairs and out onto the Boulevard St. Michel in the warm June evening.
"Where will we go?"
"Want to eat on the island?"
"Sure."
We walked down the Boulevard. At the juncture of the Rue Denfert-Rochereau with the Boulevard is a statue of two men in flowing robes.
"I know who they are." Bill eyed the monument. "Gentlemen who invented pharmacy. Don't try and fool me on Paris."
We went on.
"Here's a taxidermist's," Bill said. "Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?"
"Come on," I said. "You're pie-eyed."
"Pretty nice stuffed dogs," Bill said. "Certainly brighten up your flat."
"Come on."
"Just one stuffed dog. I can take 'em or leave 'em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog."
"Come on."
"Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog."
"We'll get one on the way back."
"All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."
We went on.
"How'd you feel that way about dogs so sudden?"
"Always felt that way about dogs. Always been a great lover of stuffed animals."
We stopped and had a drink.
"Certainly like to drink," Bill said. "You ought to try it some times, Jake."
"You're about a hundred and forty-four ahead of me."
"Ought not to daunt you. Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public."
"Where were you drinking?"
"Stopped at the Crillon. George made me a couple of Jack Roses. George's a great man. Know the secret of his success? Never been daunted."
"You'll be daunted after about three more pernods."
"Not in public. If I begin to feel daunted I'll go off by myself. I'm like a cat that way."
"When did you see Harvey Stone?"
"At the Crillon. Harvey was just a little daunted. Hadn't eaten for three days. Doesn't eat any more. Just goes off like a cat. Pretty sad."
"He's all right."
"Splendid. Wish he wouldn't keep going off like a cat, though. Makes me nervous."
"What'll we do to-night?"
"Doesn't make any difference. Only let's not get daunted. Suppose they got any hard-boiled eggs here? If they had hard-boiled eggs here we wouldn't have to go all the way down to the island to eat."
"Nix," I said. "We're going to have a regular meal."
"Just a suggestion," said Bill. "Want to start now?"
"Come on."
We started on again down the Boulevard. A horse-cab passed us. Bill looked at it.
"See that horse-cab? Going to have that horse-cab stuffed for you for Christmas. Going to give all my friends stuffed animals. I'm a nature-writer."
A taxi passed, some one in it waved, then banged for the driver to stop. The taxi backed up to the curb. In it was Brett.
"Beautiful lady," said Bill. "Going to kidnap us."
"Hullo!" Brett said. "Hullo!"
"This is Bill Gorton. Lady Ashley."
Brett smiled at Bill. "I say I'm just back. Haven't bathed even. Michael comes in to-night."
"Good. Come on and eat with us, and we'll all go to meet him."
"Must clean myself."
"Oh, rot! Come on."
"Must bathe. He doesn't get in till nine."
"Come and have a drink, then, before you bathe."
"Might do that. Now you're not talking rot."
We got in the taxi. The driver looked around.
"Stop at the nearest bistro," I said.
"We might as well go to the Closerie," Brett said. "I can't drink these rotten brandies."
"Closerie des Lilas."
Brett turned to Bill.
"Have you been in this pestilential city long?"
"Just got in to-day from Budapest."
"How was Budapest?"
"Wonderful. Budapest was wonderful."
"Ask him about Vienna."
"Vienna," said Bill, "is a strange city."
"Very much like Paris," Brett smiled at him, wrinkling the corners of her eyes.
"Exactly," Bill said. "Very much like Paris at this moment."

 

[Unregistered]

"You have a good start."
Sitting out on the terraces of the Lilas Brett ordered a whiskey and soda, I took one, too, and Bill took another pernod.
"How are you, Jake?"
"Great," I said. "I've had a good time."
Brett looked at me. "I was a fool to go away," she said. "One's an ass to leave Paris."
"Did you have a good time?"
"Oh, all right. Interesting. Not frightfully amusing."
"See anybody?"
"No, hardly anybody. I never went out."
"Didn't you swim?"
"No. Didn't do a thing."
"Sounds like Vienna," Bill said.
Brett wrinkled up the corners of her eyes at him.
"So that's the way it was in Vienna."
"It was like everything in Vienna."
Brett smiled at him again.
"You've a nice friend, Jake."
"He's all right," I said. "He's a taxidermist."
"That was in another country," Bill said. "And besides all the animals were dead."
"One more," Brett said, "and I must run. Do send the waiter for a taxi."
"There's a line of them. Right out in front."
"Good."
We had the drink and put Brett into her taxi.
"Mind you're at the Select around ten. Make him come. Michael will be there."
"We'll be there," Bill said. The taxi started and Brett waved.
"Quite a girl," Bill said. "She's damned nice. Who's Michael?"
"The man she's going to marry."
"Well, well," Bill said. "That's always just the stage I meet anybody. What'll I send them? Think they'd like a couple of stuffed race-horses?"
"We better eat."
"Is she really Lady something or other?" Bill asked in the taxi on our way down to the Ile Saint Louis.
"Oh, yes. In the stud-book and everything."
"Well, well."
We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. Bill had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, and right after the armistice, and Madame Lecomte made a great fuss over seeing him.
"Doesn't get us a table, though," Bill said. "Grand woman, though."
We had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple-pie and cheese.
"You've got the world here all right," Bill said to Madame Lecomte. She raised her hand. "Oh, my God!"
"You'll be rich."
"I hope so."
After the coffee and a fine we got the bill, chalked up the same as ever on a slate, that was doubtless one of the "quaint" features, paid it, shook hands, and went out.
"You never come here any more, Monsieur Barnes," Madame Lecomte said.
"Too many compatriots."
"Come at lunch-time. It's not crowded then."
"Good. I'll be down soon."
We walked along under the trees that grew out over the river on the Quai d'Orléans side of the island. Across the river were the broken walls of old houses that were being torn down.
"They're going to cut a street through."
"They would," Bill said.
We walked on and circled the island. The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of the Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked down the river at Notre Dame. Standing on the bridge the island looked dark, the houses were high against the sky, and the trees were shadows.
"It's pretty grand," Bill said. "God, I love to get back."
We leaned on the wooden rail of the bridge and looked up the river to the lights of the big bridges. Below the water was smooth and black. It made no sound against the piles of the bridge. A man and a girl passed us. They were walking with their arms around each other.
We crossed the bridge and walked up the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine. It was steep walking, and we went all the way up to the Place Contrescarpe. The arc-light shone through the leaves of the trees in the square, and underneath the trees was an S bus ready to start. Music came out of the door of the Negre Joyeux. Through the window of the Café Aux Amateurs I saw the long zinc bar. Outside on the terrace working people were drinking. In the open kitchen of the Amateurs a girl was cooking potato-chips in oil. There was an iron pot of stew. The girl ladled some onto a plate for an old man who stood holding a bottle of red wine in one hand.
"Want to have a drink?"
"No," said Bill. "I don't need it."
We turned to the right off the Place Contrescarpe, walking along smooth narrow streets with high old houses on both sides. Some of the houses jutted out toward the street. Others were cut back. We came onto the Rue du Pot de Fer and followed it along until it brought us to the rigid north and south of the Rue Saint Jacques and then walked south, past Val de Grace, set back behind the courtyard and the iron fence, to the Boulevard du Port Royal.
"What do you want to do?" I asked. "Go up to the café and see Brett and Mike?"
"Why not?"
We walked along Port Royal until it became Montparnasse, and then on past the Lilas, Lavigne's, and all the little cafés, Damoy's, crossed the street to the Rotonde, past its lights and tables to the Select.
Michael came toward us from the tables. He was tanned and healthy-looking.
"Hel-lo, Jake," he said. "Hel-lo! Hel-lo! How are you, old lad?"
"You look very fit, Mike."
"Oh, I am. I'm frightfully fit. I've done nothing but walk. Walk all day long. One drink a day with my mother at tea."
Bill had gone into the bar. He was standing talking with Brett, who was sitting on a high stool, her legs crossed. She had no stockings on.
"It's good to see you, Jake," Michael said. "I'm a little tight you know. Amazing, isn't it? Did you see my nose?"
There was a patch of dried blood on the bridge of his nose.
"An old lady's bags did that," Mike said. "I reached up to help her with them and they fell on me."
Brett gestured at him from the bar with her cigarette-holder and wrinkled the corners of her eyes.
"An old lady," said Mike. "Her bags fell on me. Let's go in and see Brett. I say, she is a piece. You are a lovely lady, Brett. Where did you get that hat?"
"Chap bought it for me. Don't you like it?"
"It's a dreadful hat. Do get a good hat."
"Oh, we've so much money now," Brett said. "I say, haven't you met Bill yet? You _are_ a lovely host, Jake."
She turned to Mike. "This is Bill Gorton. This drunkard is Mike Campbell. Mr. Campbell is an undischarged bankrupt."
"Aren't I, though? You know I met my ex-partner yesterday in London. Chap who did me in."
"What did he say?"
"Bought me a drink. I thought I might as well take it. I say, Brett, you are a lovely piece. Don't you think she's beautiful?"
"Beautiful. With this nose?"
"It's a lovely nose. Go on, point it at me. Isn't she a lovely piece?"
"Couldn't we have kept the man in Scotland?"
"I say, Brett, let's turn in early."
"Don't be indecent, Michael. Remember there are ladies at this bar."
"Isn't she a lovely piece? Don't you think so, Jake?"
"There's a fight to-night," Bill said. "Like to go?"
"Fight," said Mike. "Who's fighting?"
"Ledoux and somebody."
"He's very good, Ledoux," Mike said. "I'd like to see it, rather"--he was making an effort to pull himself together--"but I can't go. I had a date with this thing here. I say, Brett, do get a new hat."
Brett pulled the felt hat down far over one eye and smiled out from under it. "You two run along to the fight. I'll have to be taking Mr. Campbell home directly."
"I'm not tight," Mike said. "Perhaps just a little. I say, Brett, you are a lovely piece."
"Go on to the fight," Brett said. "Mr. Campbell's getting difficult. What are these outbursts of affection, Michael?"
"I say, you are a lovely piece."
We said good night. "I'm sorry I can't go," Mike said. Brett laughed. I looked back from the door. Mike had one hand on the bar and was leaning toward Brett, talking. Brett was looking at him quite coolly, but the corners of her eyes were smiling.
Outside on the pavement I said: "Do you want to go to the fight?"
"Sure," said Bill. "If we don't have to walk."
"Mike was pretty excited about his girl friend," I said in the taxi.
"Well," said Bill. "You can't blame him such a hell of a lot."

 

[Unregistered]

The Ledoux-Kid Francis fight was the night of the 20th of June. It was a good fight. The morning after the fight I had a letter from Robert Cohn, written from Hendaye. He was having a very quiet time, he said, bathing, playing some golf and much bridge. Hendaye had a splendid beach, but he was anxious to start on the fishing-trip. When would I be down? If I would buy him a double-tapered line he would pay me when I came down.
That same morning I wrote Cohn from the office that Bill and I would leave Paris on the 25th unless I wired him otherwise, and would meet him at Bayonne, where we could get a bus over the mountains to Pamplona. The same evening about seven o'clock I stopped in at the Select to see Michael and Brett. They were not there, and I went over to the Dingo. They were inside sitting at the bar.
"Hello, darling." Brett put out her hand.
"Hello, Jake," Mike said. "I understand I was tight last night."
"Weren't you, though," Brett said. "Disgraceful business."
"Look," said Mike, "when do you go down to Spain? Would you mind if we came down with you?"
"It would be grand."
"You wouldn't mind, really? I've been at Pamplona, you know. Brett's mad to go. You're sure we wouldn't just be a bloody nuisance?"
"Don't talk like a fool."
"I'm a little tight, you know. I wouldn't ask you like this if I weren't. You're sure you don't mind?"
"Oh, shut up, Michael," Brett said. "How can the man say he'd mind now? I'll ask him later."
"But you don't mind, do you?"
"Don't ask that again unless you want to make me sore. Bill and I go down on the morning of the 25th."
"By the way, where is Bill?" Brett asked.
"He's out at Chantilly dining with some people."
"He's a good chap."
"Splendid chap," said Mike. "He is, you know."
"You don't remember him," Brett said.
"I do. Remember him perfectly. Look, Jake, we'll come down the night of the 25th. Brett can't get up in the morning."
"Indeed not!"
"If our money comes and you're sure you don't mind."
"It will come, all right. I'll see to that."
"Tell me what tackle to send for."
"Get two or three rods with reels, and lines, and some flies."
"I won't fish," Brett put in.
"Get two rods, then, and Bill won't have to buy one."
"Right," said Mike. "I'll send a wire to the keeper."
"Won't it be splendid," Brett said. "Spain! We _will_ have fun."
"The 25th. When is that?"
"Saturday."
"We _will_ have to get ready."
"I say," said Mike, "I'm going to the barber's."
"I must bathe," said Brett. "Walk up to the hotel with me, Jake. Be a good chap."
"We _have_ got the loveliest hotel," Mike said. "I think it's a brothel!"
"We left our bags here at the Dingo when we got in, and they asked us at this hotel if we wanted a room for the afternoon only. Seemed frightfully pleased we were going to stay all night."
"_I_ believe it's a brothel," Mike said. "And _I_ should know."
"Oh, shut it and go and get your hair cut."
Mike went out. Brett and I sat on at the bar.
"Have another?"
"Might."
"I needed that," Brett said.
We walked up the Rue Delambre.
"I haven't seen you since I've been back," Brett said.
"No."
"How _are_ you, Jake?"
"Fine."
Brett looked at me. "I say," she said, "is Robert Cohn going on this trip?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Don't you think it will be a bit rough on him?"
"Why should it?"
"Who did you think I went down to San Sebastian with?"
"Congratulations," I said.
We walked along.
"What did you say that for?"
"I don't know. What would you like me to say?"
We walked along and turned a corner.
"He behaved rather well, too. He gets a little dull."
"Does he?"
"I rather thought it would be good for him."
"You might take up social service."
"Don't be nasty."
"I won't."
"Didn't you really know?"
"No," I said. "I guess I didn't think about it."
"Do you think it will be too rough on him?"
"That's up to him," I said. "Tell him you're coming. He can always not come."
"I'll write him and give him a chance to pull out of it."
I did not see Brett again until the night of the 24th of June.
"Did you hear from Cohn?"
"Rather. He's keen about it."
"My God!"
"I thought it was rather odd myself."
"Says he can't wait to see me."
"Does he think you're coming alone?"
"No. I told him we were all coming down together. Michael and all."
"He's wonderful."
"Isn't he?"
They expected their money the next day. We arranged to meet at Pamplona. They would go directly to San Sebastian and take the train from there. We would all meet at the Montoya in Pamplona. If they did not turn up on Monday at the latest we would go on ahead up to Burguete in the mountains, to start fishing. There was a bus to Burguete. I wrote out an itinerary so they could follow us.
Bill and I took the morning train from the Gare d'Orsay. It was a lovely day, not too hot, and the country was beautiful from the start. We went back into the diner and had breakfast. Leaving the dining-car I asked the conductor for tickets for the first service.
"Nothing until the fifth."
"What's this?"
There were never more than two servings of lunch on that train, and always plenty of places for both of them.
"They're all reserved," the dining-car conductor said. "There will be a fifth service at three-thirty."
"This is serious," I said to Bill.
"Give him ten francs."
"Here," I said. "We want to eat in the first service."
The conductor put the ten francs in his pocket.
"Thank you," he said. "I would advise you gentlemen to get some sandwiches. All the places for the first four services were reserved at the office of the company."
"You'll go a long way, brother," Bill said to him in English. "I suppose if I'd given you five francs you would have advised us to jump off the train."
"_Comment?_"
"Go to hell!" said Bill. "Get the sandwiches made and a bottle of wine. You tell him, Jake."
"And send it up to the next car." I described where we were.
In our compartment were a man and his wife and their young son.
"I suppose you're Americans, aren't you?" the man asked. "Having a good trip?"
"Wonderful," said Bill.
"That's what you want to do. Travel while you're young. Mother and I always wanted to get over, but we had to wait a while."
"You could have come over ten years ago, if you'd wanted to," the wife said. "What you always said was: 'See America first!' I will say we've seen a good deal, take it one way and another."
"Say, there's plenty of Americans on this train," the husband said. "They've got seven cars of them from Dayton, Ohio. They've been on a pilgrimage to Rome, and now they're going down to Biarritz and Lourdes."
"So, that's what they are. Pilgrims. Goddam Puritans," Bill said.
"What part of the States you boys from?"
"Kansas City," I said. "He's from Chicago."
"You both going to Biarritz?"
"No. We're going fishing in Spain."
"Well, I never cared for it, myself. There's plenty that do out where I come from, though. We got some of the best fishing in the State of Montana. I've been out with the boys, but I never cared for it any."
"Mighty little fishing you did on them trips," his wife said.
He winked at us.
"You know how the ladies are. If there's a jug goes along, or a case of beer, they think it's hell and damnation."
"That's the way men are," his wife said to us. She smoothed her comfortable lap. "I voted against prohibition to please him, and because I like a little beer in the house, and then he talks that way. It's a wonder they ever find any one to marry them."
"Say," said Bill, "do you know that gang of Pilgrim Fathers have cornered the dining-car until half past three this afternoon?"
"How do you mean? They can't do a thing like that."
"You try and get seats."
"Well, mother, it looks as though we better go back and get another breakfast."
She stood up and straightened her dress.
"Will you boys keep an eye on our things? Come on, Hubert."
They all three went up to the wagon restaurant. A little while after they were gone a steward went through announcing the first service, and pilgrims, with their priests, commenced filing down the corridor. Our friend and his family did not come back. A waiter passed in the corridor with our sandwiches and the bottle of Chablis, and we called him in.
"You're going to work to-day," I said.
He nodded his head. "They start now, at ten-thirty."
"When do we eat?"
"Huh! When do I eat?"
He left two glasses for the bottle, and we paid him for the sandwiches and tipped him.
"I'll get the plates," he said, "or bring them with you."
We ate the sandwiches and drank the Chablis and watched the country out of the window. The grain was just beginning to ripen and the fields were full of poppies. The pastureland was green, and there were fine trees, and sometimes big rivers and chateaux off in the trees.
At Tours we got off and bought another bottle of wine, and when we got back in the compartment the gentleman from Montana and his wife and his son, Hubert, were sitting comfortably.
"Is there good swimming in Biarritz?" asked Hubert.
"That boy's just crazy till he can get in the watei" his mother said. "It's pretty hard on youngsters travelling."
"There's good swimming," I said. "But it's dangerous when it's rough."
"Did you get a meal?" Bill asked.
"We sure did. We set right there when they started to come in, and they must have just thought we were in the party. One of the waiters said something to us in French, and then they just sent three of them back."
"They thought we were snappers, all right," the man said. "It certainly shows you the power of the Catholic Church. It's a pity you boys ain't Catholics. You could get a meal, then, all right."
"I am," I said. "That's what makes me so sore."

 

[Unregistered]

Finally at a quarter past four we had lunch. Bill had been rather difficult at the last. He buttonholed a priest who was coming back with one of the returning streams of pilgrims.
"When do us Protestants get a chance to eat, father?"
"I don't know anything about it. Haven't you got tickets?"
"It's enough to make a man join the Klan," Bill said. The priest looked back at him.
Inside the dining-car the waiters served the fifth successive table d'hôte meal. The waiter who served us was soaked through. His white jacket was purple under the arms.
"He must drink a lot of wine."
"Or wear purple undershirts."
"Let's ask him."
"No. He's too tired."
The train stopped for half an hour at Bordeaux and we went out through the station for a little walk. There was not time to get in to the town. Afterward we passed through the Landes and watched the sun set. There were wide fire-gaps cut through the pines, and you could look up them like avenues and see wooded hills way off. About seven-thirty we had dinner and watched the country through the open window in the diner. It was all sandy pine country full of heather. There were little clearings with houses in them, and once in a while we passed a sawmill. It got dark and we could feel the country hot and sandy and dark outside of the window, and about nine o'clock we got into Bayonne. The man and his wife and Hubert all shook hands with us. They were going on to LaNegresse to change for Biarritz.
"Well, I hope you have lots of luck," he said.
"Be careful about those bull-fights."
"Maybe we'll see you at Biarritz," Hubert said.
We got off with our bags and rod-cases and passed through the dark station and out to the lights and the line of cabs and hotel buses. There, standing with the hotel runners, was Robert Cohn. He did not see us at first. Then he started forward.
"Hello, Jake. Have a good trip?"
"Fine," I said. "This is Bill Gorton."
"How are you?"
"Come on," said Robert. "I've got a cab." He was a little near-sighted. I had never noticed it before. He was looking at Bill, trying to make him out. He was shy, too.
"We'll go up to my hotel. It's all right. It's quite nice."
We got into the cab, and the cabman put the bags up on the seat beside him and climbed up and cracked his whip, and we drove over the dark bridge and into the town.
"I'm awfully glad to meet you," Robert said to Bill. "I've heard so much about you from Jake and I've read your books. Did you get my line, Jake?"
The cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room.

 

[Unregistered]

In the morning it was bright, and they were sprinkling the streets of the town, and we all had breakfast in a café. Bayonne is a nice town. It is like a very clean Spanish town and it is on a big river. Already, so early in the morning, it was very hot on the bridge across the river. We walked out on the bridge and then took a walk through the town.
I was not at all sure Mike's rods would come from Scotland in time, so we hunted a tackle store and finally bought a rod for Bill up-stairs over a drygoods store. The man who sold the tackle was out, and we had to wait for him to come back. Finally he came in, and we bought a pretty good rod cheap, and two landing-nets.
We went out into the street again and took a look at the cathedral. Cohn made some remark about it being a very good example of something or other, I forget what. It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like Spanish churches. Then we went up past the old fort and out to the local Syndicat d'Initiative office, where the bus was supposed to start from. There they told us the bus service did not start until the 1st of July. We found out at the tourist office what we ought to pay for a motor-car to Pamplona and hired one at a big garage just around the corner from the Municipal Theatre for four hundred francs. The car was to pick us up at the hotel in forty minutes, and we stopped at the café on the square where we had eaten breakfast, and had a beer. It was hot, but the town had a cool, fresh, early-morning smell and it was pleasant sitting in the café. A breeze started to blow, and you could feel that the air came from the sea. There were pigeons out in the square, and the houses were a yellow, sun-baked color, and I did not want to leave the café. But we had to go to the hotel to get our bags packed and pay the bill. We paid for the beers, we matched and I think Cohn paid, and went up to the hotel. It was only sixteen francs apiece for Bill and me, with ten per cent added for the service, and we had the bags sent down and waited for Robert Cohn. While we were waiting I saw a cockroach on the parquet floor that must have been at least three inches long. I pointed him out to Bill and then put my shoe on him. We agreed he must have just come in from the garden. It was really an awfully clean hotel.
Cohn came down, finally, and we all went out to the car. It was a big, closed car, with a driver in a white duster with blue collar and cuffs, and we had him put the back of the car down. He piled in the bags and we started off up the street and out of the town. We passed some lovely gardens and had a good look back at the town, and then we were out in the country, green and rolling, and the road climbing all the time. We passed lots of Basques with oxen, or cattle, hauling carts along the road, and nice farmhouses, low roofs, and all white-plastered. In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well-off and clean. Every village had a pelota court and on some of them kids were playing in the hot sun. There were signs on the walls of the churches saying it was forbidden to play pelota against them, and the houses in the villages had red tiled roofs, and then the road turned off and commenced to climb and we were going way up close along a hillside, with a valley below and hills stretched off back toward the sea. You couldn't see the sea. It was too far away. You could see only hills and more hills, and you knew where the sea was.
We crossed the Spanish frontier. There was a little stream and a bridge, and Spanish carabineers, with patent-leather Bonaparte hats, and short guns on their backs, on one side, and on the other fat Frenchmen in kepis and mustaches. They only opened one bag and took the passports in and looked at them. There was a general store and inn on each side of the line. The chauffeur had to go in and fill out some papers about the car and we got out and went over to the stream to see if there were any trout. Bill tried to talk some Spanish to one of the carabineers, but it did not go very well. Robert Cohn asked, pointing with his finger, if there were any trout in the stream, and the carabineer said yes, but not many.
I asked him if he ever fished, and he said no, that he didn't care for it.
Just then an old man with long, sunburned hair and beard, and clothes that looked as though they were made of gunny-sacking, came striding up to the bridge. He was carrying a long staff, and he had a kid slung on his back, tied by the four legs, the head hanging down.
The carabineer waved him back with his sword. The man turned without saying anything, and started back up the white road into Spain.
"What's the matter with the old one?" I asked.
"He hasn't got any passport."
I offered the guard a cigarette. He took it and thanked me.
"What will he do?" I asked.
The guard spat in the dust.
"Oh, he'll just wade across the stream."
"Do you have much smuggling?"
"Oh," he said, "they go through."
The chauffeur came out, folding up the papers and putting them in the inside pocket of his coat. We all got in the car and it started up the white dusty road into Spain. For a while the country was much as it had been; then, climbing all the time, we crossed the top of a Col, the road winding back and forth on itself, and then it was really Spain. There were long brown mountains and a few pines and far-off forests of beech-trees on some of the mountainsides. The road went along the summit of the Col and then dropped down, and the driver had to honk, and slow up, and turn out to avoid running into two donkeys that were sleeping in the road. We came down out of the mountains and through an oak forest, and there were white cattle grazing in the forest. Down below there were grassy plains and clear streams, and then we crossed a stream and went through a gloomy little village, and started to climb again. We climbed up and up and crossed another high Col and turned along it, and the road ran down to the right, and we saw a whole new range of mountains off to the south, all brown and baked-looking and furrowed in strange shapes.
After a while we came out of the mountains, and there were trees along both sides of the road, and a stream and ripe fields of grain, and the road went on, very white and straight ahead, and then lifted to a little rise, and off on the left was a hill with an old castle, with buildings close around it and a field of grain going right up to the walls and shifting in the wind. I was up in front with the driver and I turned around. Robert Cohn was asleep, but Bill looked and nodded his head. Then we crossed a wide plain, and there was a big river off on the right shining in the sun from between the line of trees, and away off you could see the plateau of Pamplona rising out of the plain, and the walls of the city, and the great brown cathedral, and the broken skyline of the other churches. In back of the plateau were the mountains, and every way you looked there were other mountains, and ahead the road stretched out white across the plain going toward Pamplona.
We came into the town on the other side of the plateau, the road slanting up steeply and dustily with shade-trees on both sides, and then levelling out through the new part of town they are building up outside the old walls. We passed the bull-ring, high and white and concrete-looking in the sun, and then came into the big square by a side street and stopped in front of the Hotel Montoya.
The driver helped us down with the bags. There was a crowd of kids watching the car, and the square was hot, and the trees were green, and the flags hung on their staffs, and it was good to get out of the sun and under the shade of the arcade that runs all the way around the square. Montoya was glad to see us, and shook hands and gave us good rooms looking out on the square, and then we washed and cleaned up and went down-stairs in the dining-room for lunch. The driver stayed for lunch, too, and afterward we paid him and he started back to Bayonne.
There are two dining-rooms in the Montoya. One is up-stairs on the second floor and looks out on the square. The other is down one floor below the level of the square and has a door that opens on the back street that the bulls pass along when they run through the streets early in the morning on their way to the ring. It is always cool in the down-stairs dining-room and we had a very good lunch. The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d'ceuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit. You have to drink plenty of wine to get it all down. Robert Cohn tried to say he did not want any of the second meat course, but we would not interpret for him, and so the waitress brought him something else as a replacement, a plate of cold meats, I think. Cohn had been rather nervous ever since we had met at Bayonne. He did not know whether we knew Brett had been with him at San Sebastian, and it made him rather awkward.
"Well," I said, "Brett and Mike ought to get in to-night."
"I'm not sure they'll come," Cohn said.
"Why not?" Bill said. "Of course they'll come."
"They're always late," I said.
"I rather think they're not coming," Robert Cohn said.
He said it with an air of superior knowledge that irritated both of us.
"I'll bet you fifty pesetas they're here to-night," Bill said. He always bets when he is angered, and so he usually bets foolishly.
"I'll take it," Cohn said. "Good. You remember it, Jake. Fifty pesetas."
"I'll remember it myself," Bill said. I saw he was angry and wanted to smooth him down.
"It's a sure thing they'll come," I said. "But maybe not tonight."
"Want to call it off?" Cohn asked.
"No. Why should I? Make it a hundred if you like."
"All right. I'll take that."
"That's enough," I said. "Or you'll have to make a book and give me some of it."
"I'm satisfied," Cohn said. He smiled. "You'll probably win it back at bridge, anyway."
"You haven't got it yet," Bill said.
We went out to walk around under the arcade to the Café Irufla for coffee. Cohn said he was going over and get a shave.
"Say," Bill said to me, "have I got any chance on that bet?"
"You've got a rotten chance. They've never been on time anywhere. If their money doesn't come it's a cinch they won't get in tonight."

 

[Unregistered]

"I was sorry as soon as I opened my mouth. But I had to call him. He's all right, I guess, but where does he get this inside stuff? Mike and Brett fixed it up with us about coming down here."
I saw Cohn coming over across the square.
"Here he comes."
"Well, let him not get superior and Jewish."
"The barber shop's closed," Cohn said. "It's not open till four."
We had coffee at the Iruña, sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square. After a while Bill went to write some letters and Cohn went over to the barber-shop. It was still closed, so he decided to go up to the hotel and get a bath, and I sat out in front of the café and then went for a walk in the town. It was very hot, but I kept on the shady side of the streets and went through the market and had a good time seeing the town again. I went to the Ayuntamiento and found the old gentleman who subscribes for the bull-fight tickets for me every year, and he had gotten the money I sent him from Paris and renewed my subscriptions, so that was all set. He was the archivist, and all the archives of the town were in his office. That has nothing to do with the story. Anyway, his office had a green baize door and a big wooden door, and when I went out I left him sitting among the archives that covered all the walls, and I shut both the doors, and as I went out of the building into the street the porter stopped me to brush off my coat.
"You must have been in a motor-car," he said.
The back of the collar and the upper part of the shoulders were gray with dust.
"From Bayonne."
"Well, well," he said. "I knew you were in a motor-car from the way the dust was." So I gave him two copper coins.

 

[Unregistered]

At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the facade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray foi and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn't seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun. The sunlight was hot and hard, and I crossed over beside some buildings, and walked back along sidestreets to the hotel.
At dinner that night we found that Robert Cohn had taken a bath, had had a shave and a haircut and a shampoo, and something put on his hair afterward to make it stay down. He was nervous, and I did not try to help him any. The train was due in at nine o'clock from San Sebastian, and, if Brett and Mike were coming, they would be on it. At twenty minutes to nine we were not half through dinner. Robert Cohn got up from the table and said he would go to the station. I said I would go with him, just to devil him. Bill said he would be damned if he would leave his dinner. I said we would be right back.
We walked to the station. I was enjoying Cohn's nervousness. I hoped Brett would be on the train. At the station the train was late, and we sat on a baggage-truck and waited outside in the dark. I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn--nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.
After a while we heard the train-whistle way off below on the other side of the plateau, and then we saw the headlight coming up the hill. We went inside the station and stood with a crowd of people just back of the gates, and the train came in and stopped, and everybody started coming out through the gates.
They were not in the crowd. We waited till everybody had gone through and out of the station and gotten into buses, or taken cabs, or were walking with their friends or relatives through the dark into the town.
"I knew they wouldn't come," Robert said. We were going back to the hotel.
"I thought they might," I said.
Bill was eating fruit when we came in and finishing a bottle of wine.
"Didn't come, eh?"
"No."
"Do you mind if I give you that hundred pesetas in the morning, Cohn?" Bill asked. "I haven't changed any money here yet."
"Oh, forget about it," Robert Cohn said. "Let's bet on something else. Can you bet on bull-fights?"
"You could," Bill said, "but you don't need to."
"It would be like betting on the war," I said. "You don't need any economic interest."
"I'm very curious to see them," Robert said.
Montoya came up to our table. He had a telegram in his hand. "It's for you." He handed it to me.
It read: "Stopped night San Sebastian."
"It's from them," I said. I put it in my pocket. Ordinarily I should have handed it over.
"They've stopped over in San Sebastian," I said. "Send their regards to you."
Why I felt that impulse to devil him I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that little spell of superiority at lunch--that and when he went through all that barbering. So I put the telegram in my pocket. The telegram came to me, anyway.
"Well," I said. "We ought to pull out on the noon bus for Burguete. They can follow us if they get in to-morrow night."
There were only two trains up from San Sebastian, an early morning train and the one we had just met.
"That sounds like a good idea," Cohn said.
"The sooner we get on the stream the better."
"It's all one to me when we start," Bill said. "The sooner the better."
We sat in the Irufla for a while and had coffee and then took a little walk out to the bull-ring and across the field and under the trees at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river in the dark, and I turned in early. Bill and Cohn stayed out in the café quite late, I believe, because I was asleep when they came in.
In the morning I bought three tickets for the bus to Burguete. It was scheduled to leave at two o'clock. There was nothing earlier. I was sitting over at the Irufla reading the papers when I saw Robert Cohn coming across the square. He came up to the table and sat down in one of the wicker chairs.
"This is a comfortable café," he said. "Did you have a good night, Jake?"
"I slept like a log."
"I didn't sleep very well. Bill and I were out late, too."
"Where were you?"
"Here. And after it shut we went over to that other café. The old man there speaks German and English."
"The Café Suizo."
"That's it. He seems like a nice old fellow. I think it's a better café than this one."
"It's not so good in the daytime," I said. "Too hot. By the way, I got the bus tickets."
"I'm not going up to-day. You and Bill go on ahead."
"I've got your ticket."
"Give it to me. I'll get the money back."
"It's five pesetas."
Robert Cohn took out a silver five-peseta piece and gave it to me.
"I ought to stay," he said. "You see I'm afraid there's some sort of misunderstanding."
"Why," I said. "They may not come here for three or four days now if they start on parties at San Sebastian."
"That's just it," said Robert. "I'm afraid they expected to meet me at San Sebastian, and that's why they stopped over."
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, I wrote suggesting it to Brett."
"Why in hell didn't you stay there and meet them, then?" I started to say, but I stopped. I thought that idea would come to him by itself, but I do not believe it ever did.
He was being confidential now and it was giving him pleasure to be able to talk with the understanding that I knew there was something between him and Brett.
"Well, Bill and I will go up right after lunch," I said.
"I wish I could go. We've been looking forward to this fishing all winter." He was being sentimental about it. "But I ought to stay. I really ought. As soon as they come I'll bring them right up."
"Let's find Bill."
"I want to go over to the barber-shop."
"See you at lunch."
I found Bill up in his room. He was shaving.
"Oh, yes, he told me all about it last night," Bill said. "He's a great little confider. He said he had a date with Brett at San Sebastian."
"The lying bastard!"
"Oh, no," said Bill. "Don't get sore. Don't get sore at this stage of the trip. How did you ever happen to know this fellow anyway?"
"Don't rub it in."
Bill looked around, half-shaved, and then went on talking into the mirror while he lathered his face.
"Didn't you send him with a letter to me in New York last winter? Thank God, I'm a travelling man. Haven't you got some more Jewish friends you could bring along?" He rubbed his chin with his thumb, looked at it, and then started scraping again.
"You've got some fine ones yourself."

 

[Unregistered]

"Oh, yes. I've got some darbs. But not alongside of this Robert Cohn. The funny thing is he's nice, too. I like him. But he's just so awful."
"He can be damn nice."
"I know it. That's the terrible part."
I laughed.
"Yes. Go on and laugh," said Bill. "You weren't out with him last night until two o'clock."
"Was he very bad?"
"Awful. What's all this about him and Brett, anyway? Did she ever have anything to do with him?"
He raised his chin up and pulled it from side to side.
"Sure. She went down to San Sebastian with him."
"What a damn-fool thing to do. Why did she do that?"
"She wanted to get out of town and she can't go anywhere alone. She said she thought it would be good for him."
"What bloody-fool things people do. Why didn't she go off with some of her own people? Or you?"--he slurred that over--"or me? Why not me?" He looked at his face carefully in the glass, put a big dab of lather on each cheek-bone. "It's an honest face. It's a face any woman would be safe with."
"She'd never seen it."
"She should have. All women should see it. It's a face that ought to be thrown on every screen in the country. Every woman ought to be given a copy of this face as she leaves the altar. Mothers should tell their daughters about this face. My son"--he pointed the razor at me--"go west with this face and grow up with the country."
He ducked down to the bowl, rinsed his face with cold water, put on some alcohol, and then looked at himself carefully in the glass, pulling down his long upper lip.
My God. he said, isn't it an awful face?
He looked in the glass.
"And as for this Robert Cohn," Bill said, "he makes me sick, and he can go to hell, and I'm damn glad he's staying here so we won't have him fishing with us."
"You're damn right."
"We're going trout-fishing. We're going trout-fishing in the Irati River, and we're going to get tight now at lunch on the wine of the country, and then take a swell bus ride."
"Come on. Let's go over to the Irufla and start," I said.

 

[Unregistered]

It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and the rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up a ladder. Bill went up and Robert sat beside Bill to save a place for me, and I went back in the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Men and women were sitting on all the baggage and boxes on top, and the women all had their fans going in the sun. It certainiy was hot. Robert climbed down and I fitted into the place he had saved on the one wooden seat that ran across the top.
Robert Cohn stood in the shade of the arcade waiting for us to start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that I spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later, and it fooled me the second time. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it. The man next to Bill was talking to him in Spanish and Bill was not getting it, so he offered the man one of the bottles of wine. The man waved it away. He said it was too hot and he had drunk too much at lunch. When Bill offered the bottle the second time he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of the bus. Every one took a drink very politely, and then they made us cork it up and put it away. They all wanted us to drink from their leather wine-bottles. They were peasants going up into the hills.
Finally, after a couple more false klaxons, the bus started, and Robert Cohn waved good-by to us, and all the Basques waved goodby to him. As soon as we started out on the road outside of town it was cool. It felt nice riding high up and close under the trees. The bus went quite fast and made a good breeze, and as we went out along the road with the dust powdering the trees and down the hill, we had a fine view, back through the trees, of the town rising up from the bluff above the river. The Basque lying against my knees pointed out the view with the neck of the wine-bottle, and winked at us. He nodded his head.
"Pretty nice, eh?"
"These Basques are swell people," Bill said.
The Basque lying against my legs was tanned the color of saddleleather. He wore a black smock like all the rest. There were wrinkles in his tanned neck. He turned around and offered his wine-bag to Bill. Bill handed him one of our bottles. The Basque wagged a forefinger at him and handed the bottle back, slapping in the cork with the palm of his hand. He shoved the wine-bag up.
"Arriba! Arriba!" he said. "Lift it up."
Bill raised the wine-skin and let the stream of wine spurt out and into his mouth, his head tipped back. When he stopped drinking and tipped the leather bottle down a few drops ran down his chin.
"No! No!" several Basques said. "Not like that." One snatched the bottle away from the owner, who was himself about to give a demonstration. He was a young fellow and he held the wine-bottle at full arms' length and raised it high up, squeezing the leather bag with his hand so the stream of wine hissed into his mouth. He held the bag out there, the wine making a flat, hard trajectory into his mouth, and he kept on swallowing smoothly and regularly.
"Hey!" the owner of the bottle shouted. "Whose wine is that?"
The drinker waggled his little finger at him and smiled at us with his eyes. Then he bit the stream off sharp, made a quick lift with the wine-bag and lowered it down to the owner. He winked at us. The owner shook the wine-skin sadly.
We passed through a town and stopped in front of the posada, and the driver took on several packages. Then we started on again, and outside the town the road commenced to mount. We were going through farming country with rocky hills that sloped down into the fields. The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain. The road was white and dusty, and the dust rose under the wheels and hung in the air behind us. The road climbed up into the hills and left the rich grain-fields below. Now there were only patches of grain on the bare hillsides and on each side of the water-courses. We turned sharply out to the side of the road to give room to pass to a long string of six mules, following one after the other, hauling a high-hooded wagon loaded with freight. The wagon and the mules were covered with dust. Close behind was another string of mules and another wagon. This was loaded with lumber, and the arriero driving the mules leaned back and put on the thick wooden brakes as we passed. Up here the country was quite barren and the hills were rocky and hard-baked clay furrowed by the rain.
We came around a curve into a town, and on both sides opened out a sudden green valley. A stream went through the centre of the town and fields of grapes touched the houses.
The bus stopped in front of a posada and many of the passengers got down, and a lot of the baggage was unstrapped from the roof from under the big tarpaulins and lifted down. Bill and I got down and went into the posada. There was a low, dark room with saddles and harness, and hay-forks made of white wood, and clusters of canvas rope-soled shoes and hams and slabs of bacon and white garlics and long sausages hanging from the roof. It was cool and dusky, and we stood in front of a long wooden counter with two women behind it serving drinks. Behind them were shelves stacked with supplies and goods.
We each had an aguardiente and paid forty centimes for the two drinks. I gave the woman fifty centimes to make a tip, and she gave me back the copper piece, thinking I had misunderstood the price.
Two of our Basques came in and insisted on buying a drink. So they bought a drink and then we bought a drink, and then they slapped us on the back and bought another drink. Then we bought, and then we all went out into the sunlight and the heat, and climbed back on top of the bus. There was plenty of room now for every one to sit on the seat, and the Basque who had been lying on the tin roof now sat between us. The woman who had been serving drinks came out wiping her hands on her apron and talked to somebody inside the bus. Then the driver came out swinging two flat leather mailpouches and climbed up, and everybody waving we started off.
The road left the green valley at once, and we were up in the hills again. Bill and the wine-bottle Basque were having a conversation. A man leaned over from the other side of the seat and asked in English: "You're Americans?"
"Sure."
"I been there," he said. "Forty years ago."
He was an old man, as brown as the others, with the stubble of a white beard.
"How was it?"
"What you say?"
"How was America?"
"Oh, I was in California. It was fine."
"Why did you leave?"
"What you say?"
"Why did you come back here?"
"Oh! I come back to get married. I was going to go back but my wife she don't like to travel. Where you from?"
"Kansas City."
"I been there," he said. "I been in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City."
He named them carefully.
"How long were you over?"
"Fifteen years. Then I come back and got married."
"Have a drink?"
"All right," he said. "You can't get this in America, eh?"
"There's plenty if you can pay for it."
"What you come over here for?"
"We're going to the fiesta at Pamplona."
"You like the bull-fights?"
"Sure. Don't you?"
"Yes," he said. "I guess I like them."
Then after a little:
"Where you go now?"
"Up to Burguete to fish."
"Well," he said, "I hope you catch something."
He shook hands and turned around to the back seat again. The other Basques had been impressed. He sat back comfortably and smiled at me when I turned around to look at the country. But the effort of talking American seemed to have tired him. He did not say anything after that.
The bus climbed steadily up the road. The country was barren and rocks stuck up through the clay. There was no grass beside the road. Looking back we could see the country spread out below. Far back the fields were squares of green and brown on the hillsides. Making the horizon were the brown mountains. They were strangely shaped. As we climbed higher the horizon kept changing. As the bus ground slowly up the road we could see other mountains coming up in the south. Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain toward the north. As we came to the edge of the rise we saw the red roofs and white houses of Burguete ahead strung out on the plain, and away off on the shoulder of the first dark mountain was the gray metal-sheathed roof of the monastery of Roncesvalles.
"There's Roncevaux," I said.
"Where?"
"Way off there where the mountain starts."
"It's cold up here," Bill said.
"It's high," I said. "It must be twelve hundred metres."
"It's awful cold," Bill said.
The bus levelled down onto the straight line of road that ran to Burguete. We passed a crossroads and crossed a bridge over a stream. The houses of Burguete were along both sides of the road. There were no side-streets. We passed the church and the schoolyard, and the bus stopped. We got down and the driver handed down our bags and the rod-case. A carabineer in his cocked hat and yellow leather cross-straps came up.
"What's in there?" he pointed to the rod-case.
I opened it and showed him. He asked to see our fishing permits and I got them out. He looked at the date and then waved us on.
"Is that all right?" I asked.
"Yes. Of course."
We went up the street, past the whitewashed stone houses, families sitting in their doorways watching us, to the inn.
The fat woman who ran the inn came out from the kitchen and shook hands with us. She took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again. It was cold in the inn and the wind was starting to blow outside. The woman sent a girl up-stairs with us to show the room. There were two beds, a washstand, a clothes-chest, and a big, framed steel-engraving of Nuestra Señora de Roncesvalles. The wind was blowing against the shutters. The room was on the north side of the inn. We washed, put on sweaters, and came down-stairs into the dining-room. It had a stone floor, low ceiling, and was oakpanelled. The shutters were all up and it was so cold you could see your breath.
"My God!" said Bill. "It can't be this cold to-morrow. I'm not going to wade a stream in this weather."
There was an upright piano in the far corner of the room beyond the wooden tables and Bill went over and started to play.
"I got to keep warm," he said.
I went out to find the woman and ask her how much the room and board was. She put her hands under her apron and looked away from me.
"Twelve pesetas."
"Why, we only paid that in Pamplona."
She did not say anything, just took off her glasses and wiped them on her apron.
"That's too much," I said. "We didn't pay more than that at a big hotel."
"We've put in a bathroom."
"Haven't you got anything cheaper?"
"Not in the summer. Now is the big season."
We were the only people in the inn. Well, I thought, it's only a few days.
"Is the wine included?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well," I said. "It's all right."
I went back to Bill. He blew his breath at me to show how cold it was, and went on playing. I sat at one of the tables and looked at the pictures on the wall. There was one panel of rabbits, dead, one of pheasants, also dead, and one panel of dead ducks. The panels were all dark and smoky-looking. There was a cupboard full of liqueur bottles. I looked at them all. Bill was still playing. "How about a hot rum punch?" he said. "This isn't going to keep me warm permanently."
I went out and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Bill came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind.
"There isn't too much rum in that."
I went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher.

 

[Unregistered]

When I woke in the morning I went to the window and looked out. It had cleared and there were no clouds on the mountains. Outside under the window were some carts and an old diligence, the wood of the roof cracked and split by the weather. It must have been left from the days before the motor-buses. A goat hopped up on one of the carts and then to the roof of the diligence. He jerked his head at the other goats below and when I waved at him he bounded down.
Bill was still sleeping, so I dressed, put on my shoes outside in the hall, and went down-stairs. No one was stirring down-stairs, so I unbolted the door and went out. It was cool outside in the early morning and the sun had not yet dried the dew that had come when the wind died down. I hunted around in the shed behind the inn and found a sort of mattock, and went down toward the stream to try and dig some worms for bait. The stream was clear and shallow but it did not look trouty. On the grassy bank where it was damp I drove the mattock into the earth and loosened a chunk of sod. There were worms underneath. They slid out of sight as I lifted the sod and I dug carefully and got a good many. Digging at the edge of the damp ground I filled two empty tobacco-tins with worms and sifted dirt onto them. The goats watched me dig.
When I went back into the inn the woman was down in the kitchen, and I asked her to get coffee for us, and that we wanted a lunch. Bill was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I saw you out of the window," he said. "Didn't want to interrupt you. What were you doing? Burying your money?"
"You lazy bum!"
"Been working for the common good? Splendid. I want you to do that every morning."
"Come on," I said. "Get up."
"What? Get up? I never get up."
He climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin.
"Try and argue me into getting up."
I went on looking for the tackle and putting it all together in the tackle-bag.
"Aren't you interested?" Bill asked.
"I'm going down and eat."
"Eat? Why didn't you say eat? I thought you just wanted me to get up for fun. Eat? Fine. Now you're reasonable. You go out and dig some more worms and I'll be right down."
"Oh, go to hell!"
"Work for the good of all." Bill stepped into his underclothes. "Show irony and pity."
I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets, and the rod-case.
"Hey! come back!"
I put my head in the door.
"Aren't you going to show a little irony and pity?"
I thumbed my nose.
"That's not irony."
As I went down-stairs I heard Bill singing, "Irony and Pity. When you're feeling. . . Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity. Oh, give them Irony. When they're feeling. . . Just a little irony. Just a little pity.. ." He kept on singing until he came down-stairs. The tune was: "The Bells are Ringing for Me and my Gal." I was reading a week-old Spanish paper.
"What's all this irony and pity?"
"What? Don't you know about Irony and Pity?"
"No. Who got it up?"
"Everybody. They're mad about it in New York. It's just like the Fratellinis used to be."
The girl came in with the coffee and buttered toast. Or, rather, it was bread toasted and buttered.
"Ask her if she's got any jam," Bill said. "Be ironical with her."
"Have you got any jam?"
"That's not ironical. I wish I could talk Spanish."
The coffee was good and we drank it out of big bowls. The girl brought in a glass dish of raspberry jam.
"Thank you."
"Hey! that's not the way," Bill said. "Say something ironical. Make some crack about Primo de Rivera."
"I could ask her what kind of a jam they think they've gotten into in the Riff."
"Poor," said Bill. "Very poor. You can't do it. That's all. You don't understand irony. You have no pity. Say something pitiful."
"Robert Cohn."
"Not so bad. That's better. Now why is Cohn pitiful? Be ironic."
He took a big gulp of coffee.
"Aw, hell!" I said. "It's too early in the morning."
"There you go. And you claim you want to be a writei too. You're only a newspaper man. An expatriated newspaper man. You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity."
"Go on," I said. "Who did you get this stuff from?"
"Everybody. Don't you read? Don't you ever see anybody? You know what you are? You're an expatriate. Why don't you live in New York? Then you'd know these things. What do you want me to do? Come over here and tell you every year?"
"Take some more coffee," I said.
"Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave. You know what's the trouble with you? You're an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven't you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers."
He drank the coffee.
"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés."
"It sounds like a swell life," I said. "When do I work?"
"You don't work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you're impotent."
"No," I said. "I just had an accident."
"Never mention that," Bill said. "That's the sort of thing that can't be spoken of. That's what you ought to work up into a mystery. Like Henry's bicycle."
He had been going splendidly, but he stopped. I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with that crack about being impotent. I wanted to start him again.
"It wasn't a bicycle," I said. "He was riding horseback."
"I heard it was a tricycle."
"Well," I said. "A plane is sort of like a tricycle. The joystick works the same way."
"But you don't pedal it."
"No," I said, "I guess you don't pedal it."
"Let's lay off that," Bill said.
"All right. I was just standing up for the tricycle."
"I think he's a good writer, too," Bill said. "And you're a hell of a good guy. Anybody ever tell you were a good guy?"
"I'm not a good guy."
"Listen. You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are Lesbians under their skin."
He stopped.
"Want to hear some more?"
"Shoot," I said.
"I don't know any more. Tell you some more at lunch."
"Old Bill," I said.
"You bum!"
We packed the lunch and two bottles of wine in the rucksack, and Bill put it on. I carried the rod-case and the landing-nets slung over my back. We started up the road and then went across a meadow and found a path that crossed the fields and went toward the woods on the slope of the first hill. We walked across the fields on the sandy path. The fields were rolling and grassy and the grass was short from the sheep grazing. The cattle were up in the hills. We heard their bells in the woods.
The path crossed a stream on a foot-log. The log was surfaced off, and there was a sapling bent across for a rail. In the flat pool beside the stream tadpoles spotted the sand. We went up a steep bank and across the rolling fields. Looking back we saw Burguete, white houses and red roofs, and the white road with a truck going along it and the dust rising.
Beyond the fields we crossed another faster-flowing stream. A sandy road led down to the ford and beyond into the woods. The path crossed the stream on another foot-log below the ford, and joined the road, and we went into the woods.
It was a beech wood and the trees were very old. Their roots bulked above the ground and the branches were twisted. We walked on the road between the thick trunks of the old beeches and the sunlight came through the leaves in light patches on the grass. The trees were big, and the foliage was thick but it was not gloomy. There was no undergrowth, only the smooth grass, very green and fresh, and the big gray trees well spaced as though it were a park.
"This is country," Bill said.
The road went up a hill and we got into thick woods, and the road kept on climbing. Sometimes it dipped down but rose again steeply. All the time we heard the cattle in the woods. Finally, the road came out on the top of the hills. We were on the top of the height of land that was the highest part of the range of wooded hills we had seen from Burguete. There were wild strawberries growing on the sunny side of the ridge in a little clearing in the trees.
Ahead the road came out of the forest and went along the shoulder of the ridge of hills. The hills ahead were not wooded, and there were great fields of yellow gorse. Way off we saw the steep bluffs, dark with trees and jutting with gray stone, that marked the course of the Irati River.
"We have to follow this road along the ridge, cross these hills, go through the woods on the far hills, and come down to the Irati valley," I pointed out to Bill.
"That's a hell of a hike."
"It's too far to go and fish and come back the same day, comfortably."
"Comfortably. That's a nice word. We'll have to go like hell to get there and back and have any fishing at all."
It was a long walk and the country was very fine, but we were tired when we came down the steep road that led out of the wooded hills into the valley of the Rio de la Fabrica.
The road came out from the shadow of the woods into the hot sun. Ahead was a river-valley. Beyond the river was a steep hill. There was a field of buckwheat on the hill. We saw a white house under some trees on the hillside. It was very hot and we stopped under some trees beside a dam that crossed the river.
Bill put the pack against one of the trees and we jointed up the rods, put on the reels, tied on leaders, and got ready to fish.
"You're sure this thing has trout in it?" Bill asked.
"It's full of them."
"I'm going to fish a fly. You got any McGintys?"
"There's some in there."
"You going to fish bait?"
"Yeah. I'm going to fish the dam here."
"Well, I'll take the fly-book, then." He tied on a fly. "Where'd I better go? Up or down?"
"Down is the best. They're plenty up above, too."
Bill went down the bank.
"Take a worm can."
"No, I don't want one. If they won't take a fly I'll just flick it around."
Bill was down below watching the stream.
"Say," he called up against the noise of the dam. "How about putting the wine in that spring up the road?"
"All right," I shouted. Bill waved his hand and started down the stream. I found the two wine-bottles in the pack, and carried them up the road to where the water of a spring flowed out of an iron pipe. There was a board over the spring and I lifted it and, knocking the corks firmly into the bottles, lowered them down into the water. It was so cold my hand and wrist felt numbed. I put back the slab of wood, and hoped nobody would find the wine.
I got my rod that was leaning against the tree, took the bait-can and landing-net, and walked out onto the dam. It was built to provide a head of water for driving logs. The gate was up, and I sat on one of the squared timbers and watched the smooth apron of water before the river tumbled into the falls. In the white water at the foot of the dam it was deep. As I baited up, a trout shot up out of the white water into the falls and was carried down. Before I could finish baiting, another trout jumped at the falls, making the same lovely arc and disappearing into the water that was thundering down. I put on a good-sized sinker and dropped into the white water close to the edge of the timbers of the dam.