The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway [60]
I left the crowd in the café and went over to the hotel to get shaved for dinner. I was shaving in my room when there was a knock on the door.
"Come in," I called.
Montoya walked in.
"How are you?" he said.
"Fine," I said.
"No bulls to-day."
"No," I said, "nothing but rain."
"Where are your friends?"
"Over at the Iruña."
Montoya smiled his embarrassed smile.
"Look," he said. "Do you know the American ambassador?"
"Yes," I said. "Everybody knows the American ambassador."
"He's here in town, now."
"Yes," I said. "Everybody's seen them."
"I've seen them, too," Montoya said. He didn't say anything. I went on shaving.
"Sit down," I said. "Let me send for a drink."
"No, I have to go."
I finished shaving and put my face down into the bowl and washed it with cold water. Montoya was standing there looking more embarrassed.
"Look," he said. "I've just had a message from them at the Grand Hotel that they want Pedro Romero and Marcial Lalanda to come over for coffee to-night after dinner."
"Well," I said, "it can't hurt Marcial any."
"Marcial has been in San Sebastian all day. He drove over in a car this morning with Marquez. I don't think they'll be back tonight."
Montoya stood embarrassed. He wanted me to say something.
"Don't give Romero the message," I said.
"You think so?"
"Absolutely."
Montoya was very pleased.
"I wanted to ask you because you were an American," he said.
"That's what I'd do."
"Look," said Montoya. "People take a boy like that. They don't know what he's worth. They don't know what he means. Any foreigner can flatter him. They start this Grand Hotel business, and in one year they're through."
"Like Algabeno," I said.
"Yes, like Algabeno."
"They're a fine lot," I said. "There's one American woman down here now that collects bull-fighters."
"I know. They only want the young ones."
"Yes," I said. "The old ones get fat."
"Or crazy like Gallo."
"Well," I said, "it's easy. All you have to do is not give him the message."
"He's such a fine boy," said Montoya. "He ought to stay with his own people. He shouldn't mix in that stuff."
"Won't you have a drink?" I asked.
"No," said Montoya, "I have to go." He went out.
I went down-stairs and out the door and took a walk around through the arcades around the square. It was still raining. I looked in at the Irufla for the gang and they were not there, so I walked on around the square and back to the hotel. They were eating dinner in the down-stairs dining-room.
They were well ahead of me and it was no use trying to catch them. Bill was buying shoe-shines for Mike. Bootblacks opened the street door and each one Bill called over and started to work on Mike.
"This is the eleventh time my boots have been polished," Mike said. "I say, Bill is an ass."
The bootblacks had evidently spread the report. Another came in.
"Limpia botas?" he said to Bill.
"No," said Bill. "For this Señor."
The bootblack knelt down beside the one at work and started on Mike's free shoe that shone already in the electric light.
"Bill's a yell of laughter," Mike said.
I was drinking red wine, and so far behind them that I felt a little uncomfortable about all this shoe-shining. I looked around the room. At the next table was Pedro Romero. He stood up when I nodded, and asked me to come over and meet a friend. His table was beside ours, almost touching. I met the friend, a Madrid bullfight critic, a little man with a drawn face. I told Romero how much I liked his work, and he was very pleased. We talked Spanish and the critic knew a little French. I reached to our table for my winebottle, but the critic took my arm. Romero laughed.
"Drink here," he said in English.
He was very bashful about his English, but he was really very pleased with it, and as we went on talking he brought out words he was not sure of, and asked me about them. He was anxious to know the English for Corrida de toros, the exact translation. Bull-fight he was suspicious of. I explained that bull-fight in Spanish was the lidia of a toro. The Spanish word corrida