The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway [74]
"Let me cover you over."
"No. I'm quite warm."
"Don't go. I have n't got ten to sleep yet."
"You'll sleep, Mike. Don't worry, boy."
"Brett's got a bull-fighter," Mike said. "But her Jew has gone away."
He turned his head and looked at me.
"Damned good thing, what?"
"Yes. Now go to sleep, Mike. You ought to get some sleep."
"I'm just start ing. I'm go ing to get a lit tie sleep."
He shut his eyes. I went Out of the room and turned the door to quietly. Bill was in my room reading the paper.
"See Mike?"
"Yes."
"Let's go and eat."
"I won't eat down-stairs with that German head waiter. He was damned snotty when I was getting Mike up-stairs."
"He was snotty to us, too."
"Let's go out and eat in the town."
We went down the stairs. On the stairs we passed a girl coming up with a covered tray.
"There goes Brett's lunch," Bill said.
"And the kid's," I said.
Outside on the terrace under the arcade the German head waiter came up. His red cheeks were shiny. He was being polite.
"I haff a tabul for two for you gentlemen," he said.
"Go sit at it," Bill said. We went on out across the street.
We ate at a restaurant in a side street off the square. They were all men eating in the restaurant. It was full of smoke and drinking and singing. The food was good and so was the wine. We did not talk much. Afterward we went to the café and watched the fiesta come to the boiling-point. Brett came over soon after lunch. She said she had looked in the room and that Mike was asleep.
When the fiesta boiled over and toward the bull-ring we went with the crowd. Brett sat at the ringside between Bill and me. Directly below us was the callejon, the passageway between the stands and the red fence of the barrera. Behind us the concrete stands filled solidly. Out in front, beyond the red fence, the sand of the ring was smooth-rolled and yellow. It looked a little heavy from the rain, but it was dry in the sun and firm and smooth. The swordhandlers and bull-ring servants came down the callejon carrying on their shoulders the wicker baskets of fighting capes and muletas. They were bloodstained and compactly folded and packed in the baskets. The sword-handlers opened the heavy leather sword-cases so the red wrapped hilts of the sheaf of swords showed as the leather case leaned against the fence. They unfolded the dark-stained red flannel of the muletas and fixed batons in them to spread the stuff and give the matador something to hold. Brett watched it all. She was absorbed in the professional details.
"He's his name stencilled on all the capes and muletas," she said. "Why do they call them muletas?"
"I don't know."
"I wonder if they ever launder them."
"I don't think so. It might spoil the color."
"The blood must stiffen them," Bill said.
"Funny," Brett said. "How one doesn't mind the blood."
Below in the narrow passage of the callejon the sword-handlers arranged everything. All the seats were full. Above, all the boxes were full. There was not an empty seat except in the President's box. When he came in the fight would start. Across the smooth sand, in the high doorway that led into the corrals, the bull-fighters were standing, their arms furled in their capes, talking, waiting for the signal to march in across the arena. Brett was watching them with the glasses.
"Here, would you like to look?"
I looked through the glasses and saw the three matadors. Romero was in the centre, Belmonte on his left, Marcial on his right. Back of them were their people, and behind the banderilleros, back in the passageway and in the open space of the corral, I saw the picadors. Romero was wearing a black suit. His tricornered hat was low down over his eyes. I could not see his face clearly under the hat, but it looked badly marked. He was looking straight ahead. Marcial was smoking a cigarette guardedly, holding it in his hand. Beimonte looked ahead, his face wan and yellow, his long wolf jaw out. He was looking at nothing. Neither he nor Romero