Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online

you in bed?"
     
    "If
you tell me in a hurry."
     
    "No.
Not in a hurry. Let me tell. First I had the idea on the road somewhere after
Aix en Provence. At Nimes when we were walking in the garden I think. But I
didn't know how it would work or how to tell them how to do it. Then I thought
it out and yesterday I decided."
     
    David
stroked his hand over her head from her neck over the top of her head to her
forehead.
     
    "Let
me tell," she said. "I knew they must have good coiffeurs in Biarritz
because of the English. So when I got there I went to the best place and I told
the coiffeur that I wanted it all brushed forward and he brushed it and it came
down to my nose and I could hardly see through it and I said I wanted it cut
like a boy when he would first go to public school. He asked me what school so
I said Eton or Winchester because they were the only schools I could remember
except Rugby and I didn't want Rugby certainly. He said which. So I said Eton
but forward all the way. So after he was finished and I looked like the most
attractive girl who ever went to Eton I just had him keep on shortening it
until Eton was all gone and then I had him keep on shortening it. Then he said
very severely that is not an Eton crop, Mademoiselle. And I said I didn't want
an Eton crop, Monsieur. That was the only way I knew how to explain what I
wanted and it is Madame not Mademoiselle. So then I had him shorten it some
more and then I kept him shortening it and it is either wonderful or terrible.
You don't mind it on my forehead? When it was Eton it fell in my eye.
     
    "It's
wonderful."
     
    "It's
awfully classic," she said. "But it feels like an animal. Feel
it."
     
    He
felt it.
     
    "Don't
worry about it being too classic," she said. "My mouth balances it.
Now can we make love?"
     
    She
bent her head forward and he pulled the sweater over her head and down off her
arms and bent over her neck to unhook the safety clasp.
     
    "No
leave them."
     
    She
lay back on the bed her brown legs tight together and her head against the flat
sheet the pearls slanted away from the dark rise of her breasts. Her eyes were
shut and her arms were by her sides. She was a new girl and he saw her mouth
was changed too. She was breathing very carefully and she said, "You do
everything. From the beginning. From the very beginning."
     
    "Is
this the beginning?"
     
    "Oh
yes. And don't wait too long. No don't wait—"
     
    In
the night she lay curled around him with her head below his chest and stroked
it softly across him from one flank to another and then came up to put her lips
on his and put her arms around him and said, "You're so lovely and loyal
when you are asleep and you didn't wake and didn't wake. I thought you wouldn't
and it was lovely. You were so loyal to me. Did you think it was a dream? Don't
wake. I'm going to sleep but if I don't I'll be a wild girl. She stays awake
and takes care of you. You sleep and know I'm here. Please sleep."
     
    In
the morning when he woke there was the lovely body that he knew close against
him and he looked and saw the waxed-wood dark shoulders and neck and the fair
tawny head close and smooth lying as a small animal and he shifted down in the
bed and turned toward her and kissed her forehead with her hair under his lips
and then her eyes and then gently, her mouth.
     
    "I'm
asleep."
     
    "So
was I."
     
    "I
know. Feel how strange. All night it was wonderful how strange.
     
    "Not
strange.
     
    "Say
so if you want. Oh we fit so wonderfully. Can we both go to sleep?"
     
    "Do
you want to be asleep?"
     
    "Us
both asleep." "I'll try."
     
    "Are
you asleep?" "No."
     
    "Please
try."
     
    "I'm
trying."
     
    "Shut
your eyes then. How can you sleep if you won't shut your eyes?"
     
    "I
like to see you in the morning all new and strange."
     
    "Was
I good to invent it?"
     
    "Don't
talk."
     
    "It's
the only way to slow things. I have already. Couldn't you tell? Of course you
could. Couldn't you tell now and now and