A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page A

was only one racing story that survived, because it was out in the mails.
    I was going to races alone more now and I was involved in them and getting too mixed up with them. I worked two tracks in their season when I could, Auteuil and Enghien. It took full-time work to try to handicap intelligently and you could make no money that way. That was just how it worked out on paper. You could buy a newspaper that gave you that.
    You had to watch a jumping race from the top of the stands at Auteuil and it was a fast climb up to see what each horse did and see the horse that might have won and did not, and see why or maybe how he did not do what he could have done. You watched the prices and all the shifts of odds each time a horse you were following would start, and you had to know how he was working and finally get to know when the stable would try with him. He always might be beaten when he tried; but you should know by then what his chances were.
    It was hard work but at Auteuil it was beautiful to watch each day they raced when you could be there and see the honest races with the great horses, and you got to know the course as well as any place you had ever known. You knew many people finally, jockeys and trainers and owners and too many horses and too many things..
    In principle I only bet when I had a horse to bet on but I sometimes found horses that nobody believed in except the men who trained and rode them that won race after race with me betting on them. I stopped finally because it took too much time, I was getting too involved and I knew too much about what went on at Enghien and at the flat-racing tracks too.
    When I stopped working on the races I was glad but it left an emptiness. By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better. I put the racing capital back into the general funds and I felt relaxed and good.
    The day I gave up racing I went over to the other side of the river and met my friend Mike Ward at the travel desk in the Guaranty Trust which was then at the corner of the rue des Italiens on the Boulevard des Italiens. I was depositing the racing capital but I did not tell that to anyone. I didn't put it in the chequebook though I still kept it in my head.
    'Want to go to lunch?' I asked Mike.
    'Sure, kid. Yeah I can do it. What's the matter? Aren't you going to the track?'
    'No.'
    We had lunch at the square Louvois at a very good, plain bistro with a wonderful white wine. Across the square was the Bibliotheque Nationale.
    'You never went to the track much, Mike,' I said.
    'No. Not for quite a long time.'
    'Why did you lay off it?'
    'I don't know,' Mike said. 'Yes. Sure I do. Anything you have to bet on to get a kick isn't worth seeing.'

    'Don't you ever go out?'
    'Sometimes to see a big race. One with great horses.'
    We spread pate on the good bistro bread and drank the white wine.
    'Did you follow them a lot, Mike?'
    'Oh yes.'
    'What do you see that's better?'
    'Bicycle racing.'
    'Really?'
    'You don't have to bet on it. You'll see.'
    'That track takes a lot of time.'
    'Too much time. Takes all your time. I don't like the people.'
    'I was very interested.'
    'Sure. You make out all right?'
    'All right.'
    'Good thing to stop,' Mike said.
    'I've stopped.'
    'Hard to do. Listen, kid, we'll go to the bike races sometime.'
    That was a new and fine thing that I knew little about. But we did not start it right away. That came later. It came to be a big part of our lives later when the first part of Paris was broken up.
    But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from the track and to bet on our own life and work, and on the painters that you knew and not try to make your living gambling and call it by some other name. I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on