The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (my reading book .txt) 📗

on giving her a glass. Somebody was teaching Bill a song. Singing it into his ear. Beating time on Bill’s back.

I explained to them that I would be back. Outside in the street I went down the street looking for the shop that made leather wine-bottles. The crowd was packed on the sidewalks and many of the shops were shuttered, and I could not find it. I walked as far as the church, looking on both sides of the street. Then I asked a man and he took me by the arm and led me to it. The shutters were up but the door was open.

Inside it smelled of fresh tanned leather and hot tar. A man was stencilling completed wineskins. They hung from the roof in bunches. He took one down, blew it up, screwed the nozzle tight, and then jumped on it.

“See! It doesn’t leak.”

“I want another one, too. A big one.”

He took down a big one that would hold a gallon or more, from the roof. He blew it up, his cheeks puffing ahead of the wineskin, and stood on the bota holding on to a chair.

“What are you going to do? Sell them in Bayonne?”

“No. Drink out of them.”

He slapped me on the back.

“Good man. Eight pesetas for the two. The lowest price.”

The man who was stencilling the new ones and tossing them into a pile stopped.

“It’s true,” he said. “Eight pesetas is cheap.”

I paid and went out and along the street back to the wine-shop. It was darker than ever inside and very crowded. I did not see Brett and Bill, and someone said they were in the back room. At the counter the girl filled the two wineskins for me. One held two litres. The other held five litres. Filling them both cost three pesetas sixty centimos. Someone at the counter, that I had never seen before, tried to pay for the wine, but I finally paid for it myself. The man who had wanted to pay then bought me a drink. He would not let me buy one in return, but said he would take a rinse of the mouth from the new wine-bag. He tipped the big five-litre bag up and squeezed it so the wine hissed against the back of his throat.

“All right,” he said, and handed back the bag.

In the back room Brett and Bill were sitting on barrels surrounded by the dancers. Everybody had his arms on everybody else’s shoulders, and they were all singing. Mike was sitting at a table with several men in their shirtsleeves, eating from a bowl of tuna fish, chopped onions and vinegar. They were all drinking wine and mopping up the oil and vinegar with pieces of bread.

“Hello, Jake. Hello!” Mike called. “Come here. I want you to meet my friends. We’re all having an hors-d’œuvre.”

I was introduced to the people at the table. They supplied their names to Mike and sent for a fork for me.

“Stop eating their dinner, Michael,” Brett shouted from the wine-barrels.

“I don’t want to eat up your meal,” I said when someone handed me a fork.

“Eat,” he said. “What do you think it’s here for?”

I unscrewed the nozzle of the big wine-bottle and handed it around. Everyone took a drink, tipping the wineskin at arm’s length.

Outside, above the singing, we could hear the music of the procession going by.

“Isn’t that the procession?” Mike asked.

“Nada,” someone said. “It’s nothing. Drink up. Lift the bottle.”

“Where did they find you?” I asked Mike.

“Someone brought me here,” Mike said. “They said you were here.”

“Where’s Cohn?”

“He’s passed out,” Brett called. “They’ve put him away somewhere.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“How should we know,” Bill said. “I think he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Mike said. “I know he’s not dead. He’s just passed out on Anis del Mono.”

As he said Anis del Mono one of the men at the table looked up, brought out a bottle from inside his smock, and handed it to me.

“No,” I said. “No, thanks!”

“Yes. Yes. Arriba! Up with the bottle!”

I took a drink. It tasted of licorice and warmed all the way. I could feel it warming in my stomach.

“Where the hell is Cohn?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I’ll ask. Where is the drunken comrade?” he asked in Spanish.

“You want to see him?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Not me,” said Mike. “This gent.”

The Anis del Mono man wiped his mouth and stood up.

“Come on.”

In a back room Robert Cohn was sleeping quietly on some wine-casks. It was almost too dark to see his face. They had covered him with a coat and another coat was folded under his head. Around his neck and on his chest was a big wreath of twisted garlics.

“Let him sleep,” the man whispered. “He’s all right.”

Two hours later Cohn appeared. He came into the front room still with the wreath of garlics around his neck. The Spaniards shouted when he came in. Cohn wiped his eyes and grinned.

“I must have been sleeping,” he said.

“Oh, not at all,” Brett said.

“You were only dead,” Bill said.

“Aren’t we going to go and have some supper?” Cohn asked.

“Do you want to eat?”

“Yes. Why not? I’m hungry.”

“Eat those garlics, Robert,” Mike said. “I say. Do eat those garlics.”

Cohn stood there. His sleep had made him quite all right.

“Do let’s go and eat,” Brett said. “I must get a bath.”

“Come on,” Bill said. “Let’s translate Brett to the hotel.”

We said goodbye to many people and shook hands with many people and went out. Outside it was dark.

“What time is it do you suppose?” Cohn asked.

“It’s tomorrow,” Mike said. “You’ve been asleep two days.”

“No,” said Cohn, “what time is it?”

“It’s ten o’clock.”

“What a lot we’ve drunk.”

“You mean what a lot we’ve drunk. You went to sleep.”

Going down the dark streets to the hotel we saw the skyrockets going up in the square. Down the side streets that led to the square we saw the square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing.

It was a big meal at the hotel. It