Short Fiction, Ernest Hemingway [books to read in your 30s .txt] 📗

home office. They’ll change it for you. Or, if you would rather, I will change it myself. You know what I think of you, reader. And you’re not angry or upset about what I said about Scott Fitzgerald either, are you? I hope not. Now I am going to write the next chapter. Mr. Fitzgerald is gone and Mr. Dos Passos had gone to England, and I think I can promise you that it will be a bully chapter. At least, it will be just as good as I can write it. We both know how good that can be, if we read the blurbs, eh, reader? XIV

Inside the beanery. They are all inside the beanery. Some do not see the others. Each are intent on themselves. Red men are intent on red men. White men are intent on white men or on white women. There are no red women. Are there no squaws any more? What has become of the squaws? Have we lost our squaws in America? Silently, through the door which she had opened, a squaw came into the room. She was clad only in a pair of worn moccasins. On her back was a papoose. Beside her walked a husky dog.

“Don’t look!” the drummer shouted to the women at the counter.

“Here! Get her out of here!” the owner of the beanery shouted. The squaw was forcibly ejected by the Negro cook. They heard her thrashing around in the snow outside. Her husky dog was barking.

“My God! What that might have led to!” Scripps O’Neil mopped his forehead with a napkin.

The Indians had watched with impassive faces. Yogi Johnson had been unable to move. The waitresses had covered their faces with napkins or whatever was handy. Mrs. Scripps had covered her eyes with The American Mercury. Scripps O’Neil was feeling faint and shaken. Something had stirred inside him, some vague primordial feeling, as the squaw had come into the room.

“Wonder where that squaw came from?” the drummer asked.

“Her my squaw,” the little Indian said.

“Good God, man! Can’t you clothe her?” Scripps O’Neil said in a dumb voice. There was a note of terror in his words.

“Her no like clothes,” the little Indian explained. “Her woods Indian.”

Yogi Johnson was not listening. Something had broken inside of him. Something had snapped as the squaw came into the room. He had a new feeling. A feeling he thought had been lost forever. Lost for always. Lost. Gone permanently. He knew now it was a mistake. He was all right now. By the merest chance he had found it out. What might he not have thought if that squaw had never come into the beanery? What black thoughts he had been thinking! He had been on the verge of suicide. Self-destruction. Killing himself. Here in this beanery. What a mistake that would have been. He knew now. What a botch he might have made of life. Killing himself. Let spring come now. Let it come. It couldn’t come fast enough. Let spring come. He was ready for it.

“Listen,” he said to the two Indians. “I want to tell you about something that happened to me in Paris.”

The two Indians leaned forward. “White chief got the floor,” the tall Indian remarked.

“What I thought was a very beautiful thing happened to me in Paris,” Yogi began. “You Indians know Paris? Good. Well, it turned out to be the ugliest thing that ever happened to me.”

The Indians grunted. They knew their Paris.

“It was the first day of my leave. I was walking along the Boulevard Malesherbes. A car passed me and a beautiful woman leaned out. She called to me and I came. She took me to a house, a mansion rather, in a distant part of Paris, and there a very beautiful thing happened to me. Afterward someone took me out a different door than I had come in by. The beautiful woman had told me that she would never, that she could never, see me again. I tried to get the number of the mansion but it was one of a block of mansions all looking the same.

“From then on all through my leave I tried to see that beautiful lady. Once I thought I saw her in the theatre. It wasn’t her. Another time I caught a glimpse of what I thought was her in a passing taxi and leaped into another taxi and followed. I lost the taxi. I was desperate. Finally on the next to the last night of my leave I was so desperate and dull that I went with one of those guides that guarantee to show you all of Paris. We started out and visited various places. ‘Is this all you’ve got?’ I asked the guide.

“ ‘There is a real place, but it’s very expensive,’ the guide said. We compromised on a price finally, and the guide took me. It was in an old mansion. You looked through a slit in the wall. All around the wall were people looking through slits. There, looking through slits could be seen the uniforms of men of all the Allied countries, and many handsome South Americans in evening dress. I looked through a slit myself. For a while nothing happened. Then a beautiful woman came into the room with a young British officer. She took off her long fur coat and her hat and threw them into a chair. The officer was taking off his Sam Browne belt. I recognized her. It was the lady whom I had been with when the beautiful thing happened to me.” Yogi Johnson looked at his empty plate of beans. “Since then,” he said, “I have never wanted a woman. How I have suffered I cannot tell. But I’ve suffered, boys, I’ve suffered. I blamed it on the war. I blamed it on France. I blamed it on the decay of morality in general. I blamed it on the younger generation. I blamed it here. I blamed it there. Now I am cured.