A group of men-and one beautiful alcoholic lady of society-travel to Pamplona, Spain to watch the bullfights. Each gentleman is willing to have his heart broken by Lady Brett Ashley, knowing she will quickly move on to someone new. For the narrator, a veteran of WWI who is now impotent because of his war wound, it is nearly enough to be available to rescue her in-between loves. Both he and Lady Ashley seem to know that they are each other’s emotional match—lifelong lovers who can never fully connect.
Some fine, muscular writing:
"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters."
Inside the dining-car the waiters served the fifth successive table d'hote meal. The waiter who served us was soaked through. His jacket was purple under the arms.
"He must drink a lot of wine."
"Or wear purple undershirts."
"Let's ask him."
"No. He's too tired."
I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing.
We walked to the station. I was enjoying Cohn's nervousness. I hoped Brett would be on the train. At the station the train was late, and we sat on a baggage-truck and waited outside in the dark. I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn--nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.
It was a little past noon and there was not much shade, but I sat against the trunk of two of the trees that grew together, and read. The book was something by A. E. W. Mason, and I was reading a wonderful story about a man who had been frozen in the Alps and then fallen into a glacier and disappeared, and his bride was going to wait twenty-four years exactly for his body to come out on the moraine, while her true love waited too, and they were still waiting when Bill came up.
He could not stop looking at Brett. It seemed to make him happy. It must have been pleasant for him to see her looking so lovely, and know he had been away with her and that every one knew it. They could not take that away from him.
"I'm rather drunk," Mike said. "I think I'll stay rather drunk. This is all awfully amusing, but it's not too pleasant. It's not too pleasant for me."
I looked and saw her coming through the crowd in the square, walking, her head up, as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor, and she found it pleasant and amusing.
...he moved with greater difficulty as his pain increased, and finally the crowd were actively against him, and he was utterly contemptuous and indifferent. He had meant to have a great afternoon, and instead it was an afternoon of sneers, and shouted insults, and finally a volly of cushions and pieces of bread and vegetables, thrown down at him in the plaza where he had had his greatest triumphs.
I went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company.
...The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.
...Next morning I tipped every one a little too much at the hotel to make more friends, and left on the morning train for San Sebastian. At the station I did not tip the porter more than I should because I did not think I would ever see him again. I only wanted a few good French friends in Bayonne to make me welcome in case I should come back there again.
"Bung-o!" Brett said. I drank my glass and poured out another. Brett put her hand on my arm.
"Don't get drunk, Jake," she said. "You don't have to."
"How do you know?"
"Don't," she said. "You'll be all right."
—Susan Henderson
