The Sun Also Rises

“I shouldn’t think so. She never has any money. She gets five hundred quid a year and pays three hundred and fifty of it in interest to Jews.”

“I suppose they get it at the source,” said Bill.

“Quite. They’re not really Jews. We just call them Jews. They’re Scotsmen, I believe.”

“Hasn’t she any at all with her?” I asked.

“I hardly think so. She gave it all to me when she left.”

“Well,” Bill said, “we might as well have another drink.”

“Damned good idea,” Mike said. “One never gets anywhere by discussing finances.”

“No,” said Bill. Bill and I rolled for the next two rounds. Bill lost and paid. We went out to the car.

“Anywhere you’d like to go, Mike?” Bill asked.

“Let’s take a drive. It might do my credit good. Let’s drive about a little.”

“Fine. I’d like to see the coast. Let’s drive down toward Hendaye.”

“I haven’t any credit along the coast.”

“You can’t ever tell,” said Bill.

We drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona. The road went on ahead. Bill looked at his watch. It was time for us to go back. He knocked on the glass and told the driver to turn around. The driver backed the car out into the grass to turn it. In back of us were the woods, below a stretch of meadow, then the sea.

At the hotel where Mike was going to stay in Saint Jean we stopped the car and he got out. The chauffeur carried in his bags. Mike stood by the side of the car.

“Good-bye, you chaps,” Mike said. “It was a damned fine fiesta.”

“So long, Mike,” Bill said.

“I’ll see you around,” I said.

“Don’t worry about money,” Mike said. “You can pay for the car, Jake, and I’ll send you my share.”

“So long, Mike.”

“So long, you chaps. You’ve been damned nice.”

We all shook hands. We waved from the car to Mike. He stood in the road watching. We got to Bayonne just before the train left. A porter carried Bill’s bags in from the consigne. I went as far as the inner gate to the tracks.

“So long, fella,” Bill said.

“So long, kid!”

“It was swell. I’ve had a swell time.”

“Will you be in Paris?”

“No, I have to sail on the 17th. So long, fella!”

“So long, old kid!”

He went in through the gate to the train. The porter went ahead with the bags. I watched the train pull out. Bill was at one of the windows. The window passed, the rest of the train passed, and the tracks were empty. I went outside to the car.

“How much do we owe you?” I asked the driver. The price to Bayonne had been fixed at a hundred and fifty pesetas.

“Two hundred pesetas.”

“How much more will it be if you drive me to San Sebastian on your way back?”

“Fifty pesetas.”

“Don’t kid me.”

“Thirty-five pesetas.”

“It’s not worth it,” I said. “Drive me to the Hotel Panier Fleuri.”

At the hotel I paid the driver and gave him a tip. The car was powdered with dust. I rubbed the rod-case through the dust. It seemed the last thing that connected me with Spain and the fiesta. The driver put the car in gear and went down the street. I watched it turn off to take the road to Spain. I went into the hotel and they gave me a room. It was the same room I had slept in when Bill and Cohn and I were in Bayonne. That seemed a very long time ago. I washed, changed my shirt, and went out in the town.

At a newspaper kiosque I bought a copy of the New York Herald and sat in a cafė to read it. It felt strange to be in France again. There was a safe, suburban feeling. I wished I had gone up to Paris with Bill, except that Paris would have meant more fiesta-ing. I was through with fiestas for a while. It would be quiet in San Sebastian. The season does not open there until August. I could get a good hotel room and read and swim. There was a fine beach there. There were wonderful trees along the promenade above the beach, and there were many children sent down with their nurses before the season opened. In the evening there would be band concerts under the trees across from the cafė Marinas. I could sit in the Marinas and listen.

“How does one eat inside?” I asked the waiter. Inside the cafė was a restaurant.

“Well. Very well. One eats very well.”

“Good.”

I went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Chвteau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company. Afterward I had coffee. The waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra. He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur-glass full. He said Izzarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees. The veritable flowers of the Pyrenees. It looked like hair-oil and smelled like Italian strega. I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away and bring me a vieux marc. The marc was good. I had a second marc after the coffee.

The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.

Next morning I tipped every one a little too much at the hotel to make more friends, and left on the morning train for San Sebastian. At the station I did not tip the porter more than I should because I did not think I would ever see him again. I only wanted a few good French friends in Bayonne to make me welcome in case I should come back there again. I knew that if they remembered me their friendship would be loyal.

At Irun we had to change trains and show passports. I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France. I felt I was a fool to be going back into Spain. In Spain you could not tell about anything. I felt like a fool to be going back into it, but I stood in line with my passport, opened my bags for the customs, bought a ticket, went through a gate, climbed onto the train, and after forty minutes and eight tunnels I was at San Sebastian.

Even on a hot day San Sebastian has a certain early-morning quality. The trees seem as though their leaves were never quite dry. The streets feel as though they had just been sprinkled. It is always cool and shady on certain streets on the hottest day. I went to a hotel in the town where I had stopped before, and they gave me a room with a balcony that opened out above the roofs of the town. There was a green mountainside beyond the roofs.

I unpacked my bags and stacked my books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry. Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch. Spain had not changed to summer-time, so I was early. I set my watch again. I had recovered an hour by coming to San Sebastian.

As I went into the dining-room the concierge brought me a police bulletin to fill out. I signed it and asked him for two telegraph forms, and wrote a message to the Hotel Montoya, telling them to forward all mail and telegrams for me to this address. I calculated how many days I would be in San Sebastian and then wrote out a wire to the office asking them to hold mail, but forward all wires for me to San Sebastian for six days. Then I went