A farewell to arms
We looked at each other in the dark. I thought she was very beautiful
and I took her hand. She let me take it and I held it and put my arm
around under her arm.
“No,” she said. I kept my arm where it was.
“Why not?”
“No.”
“Yes,” I said. “Please.” I leaned forward in the dark to kiss her and
there was a sharp stinging flash. She had slapped my face hard. Her hand
had hit my nose and eyes, and tears came in my eyes from the reflex.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. I felt I had a certain advantage.
“You were quite right.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t stand the
nurse’s-evening-off aspect of it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I did hurt
you, didn’t I?”
She was looking at me in the dark. I was angry and yet certain, seeing
it all ahead like the moves in a chess game.
“You did exactly right,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Poor man.”
“You see I’ve been leading a sort of a funny life. And I never even talk
English. And then you are so very beautiful.” I looked at her.
“You don’t need to say a lot of nonsense. I said I was sorry. We do get
along.”
“Yes,” I said. “And we have gotten away from the war.”
She laughed. It was the first time I had ever heard her laugh. I watched
her face.
“You are sweet,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes. You are a dear. I’d be glad to kiss you if you don’t mind.”
I looked in her eyes and put my arm around her as I had before and
kissed her. I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her
lips; they were closed tight. I was still angry and as I held her
suddenly she shivered. I held her close against me and could feel her
heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand
and then she was crying on my shoulder.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “You will be good to me, won’t you?”
What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder.
She was crying.
“You will, won’t you?” She looked up at me. “Because we’re going to have
a strange life.”
After a while I walked with her to the door of the villa and she went in
and I walked home. Back at the villa I went upstairs to the room.
Rinaldi was lying on his bed. He looked at me.
“So you make progress with Miss Barkley?”
“We are friends.”
“You have that pleasant air of a dog in heat.”
I did not understand the word.
“Of a what?”
He explained.
“You,” I said, “have that pleasant air of a dog who—”
“Stop it,” he said. “In a little while we would say insulting things.”
He laughed.
“Good-night,” I said.
“Good-night, little puppy.”
I knocked over his candle with the pillow and got into bed in the dark.
Rinaldi picked up the candle, lit it and went on reading.
CHAPTER VI
I was away for two days at the posts. When I got home it was too late
and I did not see Miss Barkley until the next evening. She was not in
the garden and I had to wait in the office of the hospital until she
came down. There were many marble busts on painted wooden pillars along
the walls of the room they used for an office. The hall too, that the
office opened on, was lined with them. They had the complete marble
quality of all looking alike. Sculpture had always seemed a dull
business—still, bronzes looked like something. But marble busts all
looked like a cemetery. There was one fine cemetery though—the one at
Pisa. Genoa was the place to see the bad marbles. This had been the
villa of a very wealthy German and the busts must have cost him plenty.
I wondered who had done them and how much he got. I tried to make out
whether they were members of the family or what; but they were all
uniformly classical. You could not tell anything about them.
I sat on a chair and held my cap. We were supposed to wear steel helmets
even in Gorizia but they were uncomfortable and too bloody theatrical in
a town where the civilian inhabitants had not been evacuated. I wore one
when we went up to the posts and carried an English gas mask. We were
just beginning to get some of them. They were a real mask. Also we were
required to wear an automatic pistol; even doctors and sanitary
officers. I felt it against the back of the chair. You were liable to
arrest if you did not have one worn in plain sight. Rinaldi carried a
holster stuffed with toilet paper. I wore a real one and felt like a
gunman until I practised firing it. It was an Astra 7.65 caliber with a
short barrel and it jumped so sharply when you let it off that there was
no question of hitting anything. I practised with it, holding below the
target and trying to master the jerk of the ridiculous short barrel
until I could hit within a yard of where I aimed at twenty paces and
then the ridiculousness of carrying a pistol at all came over me and I
soon forgot it and carried it flopping against the small of my back with
no feeling at all except a vague sort of shame when I met
English-speaking people. I sat now in the chair and an orderly of some
sort looked at me disapprovingly from behind a desk while I looked at
the marble floor, the pillars with the marble busts, and the frescoes on
the wall and waited for Miss Barkley. The frescoes were not bad. Any
frescoes were good when they started to peel and flake off.
I saw Catherine Barkley coming down the hall, and stood up. She did not
seem tall walking toward me but she looked very lovely.
“Good-evening, Mr. Henry,” she said.
“How do you do?” I said. The orderly was listening behind the desk.
“Shall we sit here or go out in the garden?”
“Let’s go out. It’s much cooler.”
I walked behind her out into the garden, the orderly looking after us.
When we were out on the gravel drive she said, “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been out on post.”
“You couldn’t have sent me a note?”
“No,” I said. “Not very well. I thought I was coming back.”
“You ought to have let me know, darling.”
We were off the driveway, walking under the trees. I took her hands,
then stopped and kissed her.
“Isn’t there anywhere we can go?”
“No,” she said. “We have to just walk here. You’ve been away a long
time.”
“This is the third day. But I’m back now.”
She looked at me, “And you do love me?”
“Yes.”
“You did say you loved me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied. “I love you.” I had not said it before.
“And you call me Catherine?”
“Catherine.” We walked on a way and were stopped under a tree.
“Say, ‘I’ve come back to Catherine in the night.’”
“I’ve come back to Catherine in the night.”
“Oh, darling, you have come back, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I love you so and it’s been awful. You won’t go away?”
“No. I’ll always come back.”
“Oh, I love you so. Please put your hand there again.”
“It’s not been away.” I turned her so I could see her face when I kissed
her and I saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I
thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I
did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every
evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you
and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips
upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley
nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which
you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend
you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had
mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.
“I wish there was some place we could go,” I said. I was experiencing
the masculine difficulty of making love very long standing up.
“There isn’t any place,” she said. She came back from wherever she had
been.
“We might sit there just for a little while.”
We sat on the flat stone bench and I held Catherine Barkley’s hand. She
would not let me put my arm around her.
“Are you very tired?” she asked.
“No.”
She looked down at the grass.
“This is a rotten game we play, isn’t it?”
“What game?”
“Don’t be dull.”
“I’m not, on purpose.”
“You’re a nice boy,” she said. “And you play it as well as you know how.
But it’s a rotten game.”
“Do you always know what people think?”
“Not always. But I do with you. You don’t have to pretend you love me.
That’s over for the evening. Is there anything you’d like to talk
about?”
“But I do love you.”
“Please let’s not lie when we don’t have to. I had a very fine little
show and I’m all right now. You see I’m not mad and I’m not gone off.
It’s only a little sometimes.”
I pressed her hand, “Dear Catherine.”
“It sounds very funny now—Catherine. You don’t pronounce it very much
alike. But you’re very nice. You’re a very good boy.”
“That’s what the priest said.”
“Yes, you’re very good. And you will come and see me?”
“Of course.”
“And you don’t have to say you love me. That’s all over for a while.”
She stood up and put out her hand. “Good-night.”
I wanted to kiss her.
“No,” she said. “I’m awfully tired.”
“Kiss me, though,” I said.
“I’m awfully tired, darling.”
“Kiss me.”
“Do you want to very much?”
“Yes.”
We kissed and she broke away suddenly. “No. Good-night, please,
darling.” We walked to the door and I saw her go in and down the hall. I
liked to watch her move. She went on down the hall. I went on home. It
was a hot night and there was a good deal going on up in the mountains.
I watched the flashes on San Gabriele.
I stopped in front of the Villa Rossa. The shutters were up but it was
still going on inside. Somebody was singing. I went on home. Rinaldi
came in while I was undressing.
“Ah, ha!” he said. “It does not go so well. Baby is puzzled.”
“Where have you been?”
“At the Villa Rossa. It was very edifying, baby. We all sang. Where have
you been?”
“Calling on the British.”
“Thank God I did not become involved with the British.”
CHAPTER VII
I came back the next afternoon from our first mountain post and stopped
the car at the _smistimento_ where the wounded and sick were sorted by
their papers and the papers marked for the different hospitals. I had
been driving and I sat in the car and the driver took the papers in. It
was a hot day and the sky was very bright and blue and the road was
white and dusty. I sat in the high seat of the Fiat and thought about
nothing. A regiment went by in the road and I watched them pass. The men
were hot and sweating. Some wore their steel helmets but most of them
carried them slung from their packs. Most of the helmets were too big
and came down almost over the ears of the men who wore them. The
officers all wore helmets; better-fitting helmets. It was half of the
brigata Basilicata. I identified them by their red and white striped
collar mark. There were stragglers going by long after the regiment had
passed—men who could not keep up with their platoons. They were sweaty,
dusty and tired. Some looked pretty bad. A soldier came along after the
last of the stragglers. He was walking with a limp. He stopped and sat
down beside the road. I got down and went over.
“What’s the matter?”
He looked at me, then stood up.
“I’m going on.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“—— the war.”
“What’s wrong with your leg?”
“It’s not my leg. I got a rupture.”
“Why don’t you ride with the transport?” I asked. “Why don’t you go to
the hospital?”
“They won’t let me. The lieutenant said I slipped the truss on purpose.”
“Let me feel it.”
“It’s way out.”
“Which side is it on?”
“Here.”
I felt it.
“Cough,” I said.
“I’m afraid it will make it bigger. It’s twice as big as it was this
morning.”
“Sit down,” I said. “As soon as I get the papers on these wounded I’ll
take you along the road and drop you with your medical officers.”
“He’ll say I did it on purpose.”