The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway [13]
The taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde. Ten years from now it will probably be the Dome. It was near enough, anyway. I walked past the sad tables of the Rotonde to the Select. There were a few people inside at the bar, and outside, alone, sat Harvey Stone. He had a pile of saucers in front of him, and he needed a shave.
"Sit down," said Harvey, "I've been looking for you."
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Just looking for you."
"Been out to the races?"
"No. Not since Sunday."
"What do you hear from the States?"
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"What's the matter?"
"I don't know. I'm through with them. I'm absolutely through with them."
He leaned forward and looked me in the eye.
"Do you want to know something, Jake?"
"Yes."
"I haven't had anything to eat for five days."
I figured rapidly back in my mind. It was three days ago that Harvey had won two hundred francs from me shaking poker dice in the New York Bar.
"What's the matter?"
"No money. Money hasn't come," he paused. "I tell you it's strange, Jake. When I'm like this I just want to be alone. I want to stay in my own room. I'm like a cat."
I felt in my pocket.
"Would a hundred help you any, Harvey?"
"Yes."
"Come on. Let's go and eat."
"There's no hurry. Have a drink."
"Better eat."
"No. When I get like this I don't care whether I eat or not."
We had a drink. Harvey added my saucer to his own pile.
"Do you know Mencken, Harvey?"
"Yes. Why?"
"What's he like?"
"He's all right. He says some pretty funny things. Last time I had dinner with him we talked about Hoffenheimer. 'The trouble is,' he said, 'he's a garter snapper.' That's not bad."
"That's not bad."
"He's through now," Harvey went on. "He's written about all the things he knows, and now he's on all the things he doesn't know."
"I guess he's all right," I said. "I just can't read him."
"Oh, nobody reads him now," Harvey said, "except the people that used to read the Alexander Hamilton Institute."
"Well," I said. "That was a good thing, too."
"Sure," said Harvey. So we sat and thought deeply for a while.
"Have another port?"
"All right," said Harvey.
"There comes Cohn," I said. Robert Cohn was crossing the street.
"That moron," said Harvey. Cohn came up to our table.
"Hello, you bums," he said.
"Hello, Robert," Harvey said. "I was just telling Jake here that you're a moron."
"What do you mean?"
"Tell us right off. Don't think. What would you rather do if you could do anything you wanted?"
Cohn started to consider.
"Don't think. Bring it right out."
"I don't know," Cohn said. "What's it all about, anyway?"
"I mean what would you rather do. What comes into your head first. No matter how silly it is."
"I don't know," Cohn said. "I think I'd rather play football again with what I know about handling myself, now."
"I misjudged you," Harvey said. "You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development."
"You're awfully funny, Harvey," Cohn said. "Some day somebody will push your face in."
Harvey Stone laughed. "You think so. They won't, though. Because it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm not a fighter."
"It would make a difference to you if anybody did it."
"No, it wouldn't. That's where you make your big mistake. Because you're not intelligent."
"Cut it out about me."
"Sure," said Harvey. "It doesn't make any difference to me. You don't mean anything to me."
"Come on, Harvey," I said. "Have another porto."
"No," he said. "I'm going up the street and eat. See you later, Jake."
He walked out and up the street. I watched him crossing the street through the taxis, small, heavy, slowly sure of himself in the traffic.
"He always gets me sore," Cohn said. "I can't stand him."
"I like him," I said. "I'm fond of him. You don't want to get sore at him."
"I know it," Cohn said. "He just gets on my nerves."
"Write this afternoon?"
"No. I couldn't get it going. It's harder to do than my first book. I'm having a hard time handling it."