The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

difference would be that when his speed of foot would be gone he would always be frightened where now he was assured and calm in the ring and out of it.

On this evening every one had left the dining room except the hawk-faced picador who drank too much, the birthmarked-faced auctioneer of watches at the fairs and festivals of Spain, who also drank too much, and two priests from Galicia who were sitting at a corner table and drinking if not too much certainly enough. At that time wine was included in the price of the room and board at the Luarca and the waiters had just brought fresh bottles of Valdepenas to the tables of the auctioneer, then to the picador and, finally, to the two priests.

The three waiters stood at the end of the room. It was the rule of the house that they should all remain on duty until the diners whose tables they were responsible for should all have left, but the one who served the table of the two priests had an appointment to go to an Anarcho-Syndicalist meeting and Paco had agreed to take over his table for him.

Upstairs the matador who was ill was lying face down on his bed alone. The matador who was no longer a novelty was sitting looking out of his window preparatory to walking out to the cafe. The matador who was a coward had the older sister of Paco in his room with him and was trying to get her to do something which she was laughingly refusing to do. This matador was saying “Come on, little savage.”

“No,” said the sister. “Why should I?”

“For a favor.”

“You’ve eaten and now you want me for dessert.”

“Just once. What harm can it do?”

“Leave me alone. Leave me alone, I tell you.”

“It is a very little thing to do.”

“Leave me alone, I tell you.”

Down in the dining room the tallest of the waiters, who was overdue at the meeting, said “Look at those black pigs drink.”

“That’s no way to speak,” said the second waiter. “They are decent clients. They do not drink too much.”

“For me it is a good way to speak,” said the tall one. “There are the two curses of Spain, the bulls and the priests.”

“Certainly not the individual bull and the individual priest,” said the second waiter.

“Yes,” said the tall waiter. “Only through the individual can you attack the class. It is necessary to kill the individual bull and the individual priest. All of them. Then there are no more.”

“Save it for the meeting,” said the other waiter.

“Look at the barbarity of Madrid,” said the tall waiter. “It is now half-past eleven o’clock and these are still guzzling.”

“They only started to eat at ten,” said the other waiter. “As you know there are many dishes. That wine is cheap and these have paid for it. It is not a strong wine.”

“How can there be solidarity of workers with fools like you?” asked the tall waiter.

“Look,” said the second waiter who was a man of fifty. “I have worked all my life. In all that remains of my life I must work. I have no complaints against work. To work is normal.”

“Yes, but the lack of work kills.”

“I have always worked,” said the older waiter. “Go on to the meeting. There is no necessity to stay.”

“You are a good comrade,” said the tall waiter. “But you lack all ideology.”

“Mejor si me falta eso que el otro,” said the older waiter (meaning it is better to lack that than work). “Go on to the mitin.”

Paco had said nothing. He did not yet understand politics but it always gave him a thrill to hear the tall waiter speak of the necessity for killing the priests and the Guardia Civil. The tall waiter represented to him revolution and revolution also was romantic. He himself would like to be a good Catholic, a revolutionary, and have a steady job like this, while, at the same time, being a bullfighter.

“Go on to the meeting, Ignacio,” he said. “I will respond for your work.”

“The two of us,” said the older waiter.

“There isn’t enough for one,” said Paco. “Go on to the meeting.”

“Pues, me voy,” said the tall waiter. “And thanks.”

In the meantime, upstairs, the sister of Paco had gotten out of the embrace of the matador as skilfully as a wrestler breaking a hold and said, now angry, “These are the hungry people. A failed bullfighter. With your ton-load of fear. If you have so much of that, use it in the ring.”

“That is the way a whore talks.”

“A whore is also a woman, but I am not a whore.”

“You’ll be one.”

“Not through you.”

“Leave me,” said the matador who, now, repulsed and refused, felt the nakedness of his cowardice returning.

“Leave you? What hasn’t left you?” said the sister. “Don’t you want me to make up the bed? I’m paid to do that.”

“Leave me,” said the matador, his broad good-looking face wrinkled into a contortion that was like crying. “You whore. You dirty little whore.”

“Matador,” she said, shutting the door. “My matador.”

Inside the room the matador sat on the bed. His face still had the contortion which, in the ring, he made into a constant smile which frightened those people in the first rows of seats who knew what they were watching. “And this,” he was saying aloud. “And this. And this.”

He could remember when he had been good and it had only been three years before. He could remember the weight of the heavy gold-brocaded fighting jacket on his shoulders on that hot afternoon in May when his voice had still been the same in the ring as in the cafe, and how he sighted along the point-dipping blade at the place in the top of the shoulders where it was dusty in the short-haired black hump of muscle above the wide, wood-knocking, splintered-tipped horns that lowered as he went in to kill, and how the sword pushed in as easy as into a mound of stiff butter with the palm of his hand pushing the pommel, his left arm crossed low, his left shoulder forward, his weight on his left leg, and then his weight wasn’t on his leg. His weight was on his lower belly and as the bull raised his head the horn was out of sight in him and he swung over on it twice before they pulled him off it. So now when he went into kill, and it was seldom, he could not look at the horns and what did any whore know about what he went through before be fought? And what had they been through that laughed at him? They were all whores and they knew what they could do with it.

Down in the dining room the picador sat looking at the priests. If there were women in the room he stared at them. If there were no women he would stare with enjoyment at a foreigner, un ingles, but lacking women or strangers, he now stared with enjoyment and insolence at the two priests. While he stared the birth-marked auctioneer rose and folding his napkin went out, leaving over half the wine in the last bottle he had ordered. If his accounts had been paid up at the Luarca he would have finished the bottle.

The two priests did not stare back at the picador. One of them was saying, “It is ten days since I have been here waiting to see him and all day I sit in the ante-chamber and he will not receive me.”

“What is there to do?”

“Nothing. What can one do? One cannot go against authority.”

“I have been here for two weeks and nothing. I wait and they will not see me.”

“We are from the abandoned country. When the money runs out we can return.”

“To the abandoned country. What does Madrid care about Galicia? We are a poor province.”

“One understands the action of our brother Basilio.”

“Still I have no real confidence in the integrity of Basilio Alvarez.”

“Madrid is where one learns to understand. Madrid kills Spain.”

“If they would simply see one and refuse.”

“No. You must be broken and worn out by waiting.”

“Well, we shall see. I can wait as well as another.”