The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [225]
Well, it stopped raining during the night, and the next morning it was a fine, bright, cold early winter day and at twelve forty-five I pushed open the revolving doors at Chicote’s to try a little gin and tonic before lunch. There were very few people there at that hour and two waiters and the manager came over to the table. They were all smiling.
“Did they catch the murderer?” I asked.
“Don’t make jokes so early in the day,” the manager said. “Did you see him shot?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Me too,” he said. “I was just here when it happened.” He pointed to a comer table. “He placed the pistol right against the man’s chest when he fired.”
“How late did they hold people?”
“Oh, until past two this morning.”
“They only came for the fiambre,” using the Spanish slang word for corpse, the same used on menus for cold meat, “at eleven o’clock this morning.”
“But you don’t know about it yet,” the manager said.
“No. He doesn’t know,” a waiter said.
“It is a very rare thing,” another waiter said. “Muy raro.”
“And sad too,” the manager said. He shook his head.
“Yes. Sad and curious,” the waiter said. “Very sad.”
“Tell me.”
“It is a very rare thing,” the manager said.
“Tell me. Come on, tell me.”
The manager leaned over the table in great confidence.
“In the flit gun, you know,” he said. “He had eau de cologne. Poor fellow.”
“It was not a joke in such bad taste, you see?” the waiter said.
“It was really just gaiety. No one should have taken offense,” the manager said. “Poor fellow.”
“I see,” I said. “He just wanted everyone to have a good time.”
“Yes,” said the manager. “It was really just an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“And what about the flit gun?”
“The police took it. They have sent it around to his family.”
“I imagine they will be glad to have it,” I said.
“Yes,” said the manager. “Certainly. A flit gun is always useful.”
“Who was he?”
“A cabinet maker.”
“Married?”
“Yes, the wife was here with the police this morning.”
“What did she say?”
“She dropped down by him and said, ‘Pedro, what have they done to thee, Pedro? Who has done this to thee? Oh, Pedro.’ ”
“Then the police had to take her away because she could not control herself,” the waiter said.
“It seems he was feeble of the chest,” the manager said. “He fought in the first days of the movement. They said he fought in the Sierra but he was too weak in the chest to continue.”
“And yesterday afternoon he just went out on the town to cheer things up,” I suggested.
“No,” said the manager. “You see it is very rare. Everything is muy raro. This I learn from the police who are very efficient if given time. They have interrogated comrades from the shop where he worked. This they located from the card of his syndicate which was in his pocket. Yesterday he bought the flit gun and agua de colonia to use for a joke at a wedding. He had announced this intention. He bought them across the street. There was a label on the cologne bottle with the address. The bottle was in the washroom. It was there he filled the flit gun. After buying them he must have come in here when the rain started.”
“I remember when he came in,” a waiter said.
“In the gaiety, with the singing, he became gay too.”
“He was gay all right,” I said. “He was practically floating around.”
The manager kept on with the relentless Spanish logic.
“That is the gaiety of drinking with a weakness of the chest,” he said.
“I don’t like this story very well,” I said.
“Listen,” said the manager. “How rare it is. His gaiety comes in contact with the seriousness of the war like a butterfly—”
“Oh, very like a butterfly,” I said. “Too much like a butterfly.”
“I am not joking,” said the manager. “You see it? Like a butterfly and a tank.”
This pleased him enormously. He was getting into