A farewell to arms
shoes and emptied them of water. I took off my coat, took my wallet with
my papers and my money all wet in it out of the inside pocket and then
wrung the coat out. I took off my trousers and wrung them too, then my
shirt and underclothing. I slapped and rubbed myself and then dressed
again. I had lost my cap.
Before I put on my coat I cut the cloth stars off my sleeves and put
them in the inside pocket with my money. My money was wet but was all
right. I counted it. There were three thousand and some lire. My clothes
felt wet and clammy and I slapped my arms to keep the circulation going.
I had woven underwear and I did not think I would catch cold if I kept
moving. They had taken my pistol at the road and I put the holster under
my coat. I had no cape and it was cold in the rain. I started up the
bank of the canal. It was daylight and the country was wet, low and
dismal looking. The fields were bare and wet; a long way away I could
see a campanile rising out of the plain. I came up onto a road. Ahead I
saw some troops coming down the road. I limped along the side of the
road and they passed me and paid no attention to me. They were a
machine-gun detachment going up toward the river. I went on down the
road.
That day I crossed the Venetian plain. It is a low level country and
under the rain it is even flatter. Toward the sea there are salt marshes
and very few roads. The roads all go along the river mouths to the sea
and to cross the country you must go along the paths beside the canals.
I was working across the country from the north to the south and had
crossed two railway lines and many roads and finally I came out at the
end of a path onto a railway line where it ran beside a marsh. It was
the main line from Venice to Trieste, with a high solid embankment, a
solid roadbed and double track. Down the tracks a way was a flag-station
and I could see soldiers on guard. Up the line there was a bridge over a
stream that flowed into the marsh. I could see a guard too at the
bridge. Crossing the fields to the north I had seen a train pass on this
railroad, visible a long way across the flat plain, and I thought a
train might come from Portogruaro. I watched the guards and lay down on
the embankment so that I could see both ways along the track. The guard
at the bridge walked a way up the line toward where I lay, then turned
and went back toward the bridge. I lay, and was hungry, and waited for
the train. The one I had seen was so long that the engine moved it very
slowly and I was sure I could get aboard it. After I had almost given up
hoping for one I saw a train coming. The engine, coming straight on,
grew larger slowly. I looked at the guard at the bridge. He was walking
on the near side of the bridge but on the other side of the tracks. That
would put him out of sight when the train passed. I watched the engine
come nearer. It was working hard. I could see there were many cars. I
knew there would be guards on the train, and I tried to see where they
were, but, keeping out of sight, I could not. The engine was almost to
where I was lying. When it came opposite, working and puffing even on
the level, and I saw the engineer pass, I stood up and stepped up close
to the passing cars. If the guards were watching I was a less suspicious
object standing beside the track. Several closed freight-cars passed.
Then I saw a low open car of the sort they call gondolas coming, covered
with canvas. I stood until it had almost passed, then jumped and caught
the rear hand-rods and pulled up. I crawled down between the gondola and
the shelter of the high freight-car behind. I did not think any one had
seen me. I was holding to the hand-rods and crouching low, my feet on
the coupling. We were almost opposite the bridge. I remembered the
guard. As we passed him he looked at me. He was a boy and his helmet was
too big for him. I stared at him contemptuously and he looked away. He
thought I had something to do with the train.
We were past. I saw him still looking uncomfortable, watching the other
cars pass and I stooped to see how the canvas was fastened. It had
grummets and was laced down at the edge with cord. I took out my knife,
cut the cord and put my arm under. There were hard bulges under the
canvas that tightened in the rain. I looked up and ahead. There was a
guard on the freight-car ahead but he was looking forward. I let go of
the hand-rails and ducked under the canvas. My forehead hit something
that gave me a violent bump and I felt blood on my face but I crawled on
in and lay flat. Then I turned around and fastened down the canvas.
I was in under the canvas with guns. They smelled cleanly of oil and
grease. I lay and listened to the rain on the canvas and the clicking of
the car over the rails. There was a little light came through and I lay
and looked at the guns. They had their canvas jackets on. I thought they
must have been sent ahead from the third army. The bump on my forehead
was swollen and I stopped the bleeding by lying still and letting it
coagulate, then picked away the dried blood except over the cut. It was
nothing. I had no handkerchief, but feeling with my fingers I washed
away where the dried blood had been, with rain-water that dripped from
the canvas, and wiped it clean with the sleeve of my coat. I did not
want to look conspicuous. I knew I would have to get out before they got
to Mestre because they would be taking care of these guns. They had no
guns to lose or forget about. I was terrifically hungry.
CHAPTER XXXII
Lying on the floor of the flat-car with the guns beside me under the
canvas I was wet, cold and very hungry. Finally I rolled over and lay
flat on my stomach with my head on my arms. My knee was stiff, but it
had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done
half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee.
It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things
to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and
the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it
turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think
with; only to remember and not too much remember.
I could remember Catherine but I knew I would get crazy if I thought
about her when I was not sure yet I would see her, so I would not think
about her, only about her a little, only about her with the car going
slowly and clickingly, and some light through the canvas and my lying
with Catherine on the floor of the car. Hard as the floor of the car to
lie not thinking only feeling, having been away too long, the clothes
wet and the floor moving only a little each time and lonesome inside and
alone with wet clothing and hard floor for a wife.
You did not love the floor of a flat-car nor guns with canvas jackets
and the smell of vaselined metal or a canvas that rain leaked through,
although it is very fine under a canvas and pleasant with guns; but you
loved some one else whom now you knew was not even to be pretended
there; you seeing now very clearly and coldly—not so coldly as clearly
and emptily. You saw emptily, lying on your stomach, having been present
when one army moved back and another came forward. You had lost your
cars and your men as a floorwalker loses the stock of his department in
a fire. There was, however, no insurance. You were out of it now. You
had no more obligation. If they shot floorwalkers after a fire in the
department store because they spoke with an accent they had always had,
then certainly the floorwalkers would not be expected to return when the
store opened again for business. They might seek other employment; if
there was any other employment and the police did not get them.
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. Although
that ceased when the carabiniere put his hands on my collar. I would
like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the
outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience.
It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through. I
wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones,
and the calm ones and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it
was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to
Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.
Piani would tell them they had shot me. They went through the pockets
and took the papers of the people they shot. They would not have my
papers. They might call me drowned. I wondered what they would hear in
the States. Dead from wounds and other causes. Good Christ I was hungry.
I wondered what had become of the priest at the mess. And Rinaldi. He
was probably at Pordenone. If they had not gone further back. Well, I
would never see him now. I would never see any of them now. That life
was over. I did not think he had syphilis. It was not a serious disease
anyway if you took it in time, they said. But he would worry. I would
worry too if I had it. Any one would worry.
I was not made to think. I was made to eat. My God, yes. Eat and drink
and sleep with Catherine. To-night maybe. No that was impossible. But
to-morrow night, and a good meal and sheets and never going away again
except together. Probably have to go damned quickly. She would go. I
knew she would go. When would we go? That was something to think about.
It was getting dark. I lay and thought where we would go. There were
many places.
BOOK IV
CHAPTER XXXIII
I dropped off the train in Milan as it slowed to come into the station
early in the morning before it was light. I crossed the track and came
out between some buildings and down onto the street. A wine shop was
open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of
swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by
wine-glasses. The proprietor was behind the bar. Two soldiers sat at a
table. I stood at the bar and drank a glass of coffee and ate a piece of
bread. The coffee was gray with milk, and I skimmed the milk scum off
the top with a piece of bread. The proprietor looked at me.
“You want a glass of grappa?”
“No thanks.”
“On me,” he said and poured a small glass and pushed it toward me.
“What’s happening at the front?”
“I would not know.”
“They are drunk,” he said, moving his hand toward the two soldiers. I
could believe him. They looked drunk.
“Tell me,” he said, “what is happening at the front?”
“I would not know about the front.”
“I saw you come down the wall. You came off the train.”
“There is a big retreat.”
“I read the papers. What happens? Is it over?”
“I don’t think so.”
He filled the glass with grappa from a short bottle. “If you are in
trouble,” he said, “I can keep you.”
“I am not in trouble.”
“If you are in trouble stay here with me.”
“Where does one stay?”
“In the building. Many stay here. Any who are in trouble stay here.”
“Are many in trouble?”
“It depends on the trouble. You are a South American?”
“No.”
“Speak Spanish?”
“A little.”
He wiped off the bar.
“It is hard now to leave the country but in no way impossible.”
“I have no wish to leave.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. You will see what sort of man I
am.”
“I have to go this morning but I will remember the address to return.”
He shook his head. “You won’t come back if you talk like that. I thought
you were in real trouble.”
“I am in no trouble. But I value the address of a friend.”
I put a ten-lira note on the bar to pay for the coffee.
“Have a grappa with me,” I said.
“It is not necessary.”
“Have one.”
He poured the two glasses.