Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page B

said gravely as though he were speaking of a mare.
     
    It
came in a large bowl with ice floating with the slices of crisp cucumber,
tomato, garlic bread, green and red peppers, and the coarsely peppered liquid
that tasted lightly of oil and vinegar. "It's a salad soup,"
Catherine said. "It's delicious." "Es gazpacho," the waiter
said. They drank Valdepeñas now from a big pitcher and it started to build with
the foundation of the marismeño only held back temporarily by the dilution of
the gazpacho which it moved in on confidently. It built solidly. "What is
this wine?" Catherine asked. "It's an African wine," David said.
"They always say that Africa begins at the Pyrenees," Catherine said.
"I remember how impressed I was when I first heard it." "That's
one of those easy sayings," David said. "It's more complicated than
that. Just drink it." "But how can I tell about where Africa begins
if I've never been there? People are always telling you tricky things."
"Sure. You can tell." "The Basque country certainly wasn't like
Africa or anything I ever heard about Africa." "Neither is Asturias
nor Galicia but once you're in from the coast it gets to be Africa fast
enough." "But why didn't they ever paint that country?"
Catherine asked. "In all the backgrounds it is always the mountains out by
the Escorial." "The sierra," David said. "Nobody wanted to
buy pictures of Castilla the way you saw it. They never did have landscape
painters. The painters painted what was ordered." "Except Greco's
Toledo. It's terrible to have such a wonderful country and no good painters
ever paint it," Catherine said. 'What should we eat after the
gazpacho?" David said. The proprietor, who was a short middle-aged man,
heavily built and square faced, had come over. "He thinks we ought to have
meat of some kind."
     
    "Hay
solomillo muy bueno," the owner insisted.
     
    "No,
please," Catherine said. "Just a salad."
     
    "Well,
at least drink a little wine," the proprietor said and refilled the
pitcher from the spigot of the cask behind the bar.
     
    "I
shouldn't drink," Catherine said. "I'm sorry I'm talking so much. I'm
sorry if I talked stupidly. I usually do."
     
    "You
talk very interestingly and awfully well for a hot day like this. Does the wine
make you talkative?"
     
    "It's
a different sort of talkative than absinthe," Catherine said. "It
doesn't feel dangerous. I've started on my good new life and I'm reading now
and looking outward and trying not to think about myself so much and I'm going
to keep it up but we ought not to be in any town this time of year. Maybe we'll
go. The whole way here I saw wonderful things to paint and I can't paint at all
and never could. But I know wonderful things to write and I can't even write a
letter that isn't stupid. I never wanted to be a painter nor a writer until I
came to this country. Now it's just like being hungry all the time and there's
nothing you can ever do about it."
     
    "The
country is here. You don't have to do anything about it. It's always here. The
Prado's here," David said.
     
    "There's
nothing except through yourself," she said. "And I don't want to die
and it be gone.
     
    "You
have every mile we drove. All the yellow country and the white hills and the
chaff blowing and the long lines of poplars by the road. You know what you saw
and what you felt and it's yours. Don't you have le Grau du Roi and Aigues
Mortes and all the Camargue that we rode through on our bikes? This will be the
same."
     
    "But
what about when I'm dead?"
     
    "Then
you're dead."
     
    "But
I can't stand to be dead."
     
    "Then
don't let it happen till it happens. Look at things and listen and feel."
     
    "What
if I can't remember?"
     
    He
had spoken about death as though it did not matter. She drank the wine and
looked at the thick stone walls in which there were only small windows with
bars high up that gave onto a narrow street where the sun did not shine. The
doorway, though, gave onto an arcade and the bright sunlight