ERNEST HEMINGWAY - Premium Edition. Ernest Hemingway

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СКАЧАТЬ that as yet I was undecided, but it would give me pleasure if my bags were brought up from the ground floor in order that they might not be stolen. Nothing was ever stolen in the Hotel Montana. In other fondas, yes. Not here. No. The personages of this establishment were rigidly selectioned. I was happy to hear it. Nevertheless I would welcome the upbringal of my bags.

      The maid came in and said that the female English wanted to see the male English now, at once.

      “Good,” I said. “You see. It is as I said.”

      “Clearly.”

      I followed the maid’s back down a long, dark corridor. At the end she knocked on a door.

      “Hello,” said Brett. “Is it you, Jake?”

      “It’s me.”

      “Come in. Come in.”

      I opened the door. The maid closed it after me. Brett was in bed. She had just been brushing her hair and held the brush in her hand. The room was in that disorder produced only by those who have always had servants.

      “Darling!” Brett said.

      I went over to the bed and put my arms around her. She kissed me, and while she kissed me I could feel she was thinking of something else. She was trembling in my arms. She felt very small.

      “Darling! I’ve had such a hell of a time.”

      “Tell me about it.”

      “Nothing to tell. He only left yesterday. I made him go.”

      “Why didn’t you keep him?”

      “I don’t know. It isn’t the sort of thing one does. I don’t think I hurt him any.”

      “You were probably damn good for him.”

      “He shouldn’t be living with any one. I realized that right away.”

      “No.”

      “Oh, hell!” she said, “let’s not talk about it. Let’s never talk about it.”

      “All right.”

      “It was rather a knock his being ashamed of me. He was ashamed of me for a while, you know.”

      “No.”

      “Oh, yes. They ragged him about me at the café, I guess. He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I’d look so like hell.”

      “It’s funny.”

      “He said it would make me more womanly. I’d look a fright.”

      “What happened?”

      “Oh, he got over that. He wasn’t ashamed of me long.”

      “What was it about being in trouble?”

      “I didn’t know whether I could make him go, and I didn’t have a sou to go away and leave him. He tried to give me a lot of money, you know. I told him I had scads of it. He knew that was a lie. I couldn’t take his money, you know.”

      “No.”

      “Oh, let’s not talk about it. There were some funny things, though. Do give me a cigarette.”

      I lit the cigarette.

      “He learned his English as a waiter in Gib.”

      “Yes.”

      “He wanted to marry me, finally.”

      “Really?”

      “Of course. I can’t even marry Mike.”

      “Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Ashley.”

      “No. It wasn’t that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn’t go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I’d gotten more womanly, of course.”

      “You ought to feel set up.”

      “I do. I’m all right again. He’s wiped out that damned Cohn.”

      “Good.”

      “You know I’d have lived with him if I hadn’t seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well.”

      “Outside of your personal appearance.”

      “Oh, he’d have gotten used to that.”

      She put out the cigarette.

      “I’m thirty-four, you know. I’m not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children.”

      “No.”

      “I’m not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.”

      “Good.”

      She looked away. I thought she was looking for another cigarette. Then I saw she was crying. I could feel her crying. Shaking and crying. She wouldn’t look up. I put my arms around her.

      “Don’t let’s ever talk about it. Please don’t let’s ever talk about it.”

      “Dear Brett.”

      “I’m going back to Mike.” I could feel her crying as I held her close. “He’s so damned nice and he’s so awful. He’s my sort of thing.”

      She would not look up. I stroked her hair. I could feel her shaking.

      “I won’t be one of those bitches,” she said. “But, oh, Jake, please let’s never talk about it.”

      We left the Hotel Montana. The woman who ran the hotel would not let me pay the bill. The bill had been paid.

      “Oh, well. Let it go,” Brett said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

      We rode in a taxi down to the Palace Hotel, left the bags, arranged for berths on the Sud Express for the night, and went into the bar of the hotel for a cocktail. We sat on high stools at the bar while the barman shook the Martinis in a large nickelled shaker.

      “It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel,” I said.

      “Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more.”

      “No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice.”

      “It’s odd.”

      “Bartenders have always been fine.”

      “You know,” Brett said, “it’s quite true. He is only nineteen. Isn’t it amazing?”

      We touched the two glasses as they stood side by side СКАЧАТЬ