Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page B

have a fine time.”
    “All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”
    “That was bright.”
    “I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?”
    “I guess so.”
    The girl looked across at the hills.
    “They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”
    “Should we have another drink?”
    “All right.”
    The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
    “The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.
    “It’s lovely,” the girl said.
    “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”
    The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
    “I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”
    The girl did not say anything.
    “I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”
    “Then what will we do afterwards?”
    “We’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.”
    “What makes you think so?”
    “That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the one thing that’s made us unhappy.”
    The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.
    “And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”
    “I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”
    “So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”
    “Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”
    “And you really want to?”
    “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to.”
    “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”
    “I love you now. You know I love you.”
    “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”
    “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”
    “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”
    “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”
    “Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t care about me.”
    “Well, I care about you.”
    “Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.”
    “I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.”
    The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
    “And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said we could have everything.”
    “We can have everything.”
    “No, we can’t.”
    “We can have the whole world.”
    “No, we can’t.”
    “We can go everywhere.”
    “No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.”
    “It’s ours.”
    “No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”
    “But they haven’t taken it away.”
    “We’ll wait and see.”
    “Come on back in the shade,” he said. “You mustn’t feel that way.”
    “I don’t feel any way,” the girl said. “I just know things.”
    “I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do—”
    “Nor that isn’t good for me,” she said. “I know. Could we have another beer?”
    “All right. But you’ve got to realize—”
    “I realize,” the girl said. “Can’t we maybe stop