Free Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway Page A

finish breakfast—”
    “What would we have?”
    “Brioche and café au lait.”
    “Me too?”
    “You’d just have a taste of coffee in the milk.”
    “I can remember. Where would we go then?”
    “I’d wheel you across the street from the Closerie des Lilas and past the fountain with the bronze horses and the fish and the mermaids and down between the long allées of chestnut trees with the French children playing and their nurses on the benches beside the gravel paths—”
    “And the École Alsacienne on the left,” young Tom said.
    “And apartment buildings on the right—”
    “And apartment buildings and apartments with glass roofs for studios all along the street that goes down to the left and quite triste from the darkness of the stone because that was the shady side,” young Tom said.
    “Is it fall or spring or winter?” Thomas Hudson asked.
    “Late fall.”
    “Then you were cold in the face, and your cheeks and your nose were red and we would go into the Luxembourg through the iron gate at the upper end and down toward the lake and around the lake once and then turn to the right toward the Medici Fountain and the statues and out of the gate in front of the Odéon and down a couple of side streets to the Boulevard Saint-Michel—”
    “The Boul’ Mich’—”
    “And down the Boul’ Mich’ past the Cluny—”
    “On our right—”
    “That was very dark and gloomy looking and across the Boulevard Saint-Germain—”
    “That was the most exciting street with the most traffic. It’s strange how exciting and dangerous seeming it was there. And down by the Rue de Rennes it always seemed perfectly safe—between the Deux Magots and Lipp’s crossing I mean. Why was that, Papa?”
    “I don’t know, Schatz.”
    “I wish something would happen beside the names of streets,” Andrew said. “I get tired of the names of streets in a place I’ve never been.”
    “Make something happen, then, papa,” young Tom said. “We can talk about streets when we’re alone.”
    “Nothing much happened then,” Thomas Hudson said. “We would go on down to the Place Saint-Michel and we would sit on the terrace of the café and Papa would sketch with a café crème on the table and you’d have a beer.”
    “Did I like beer then?”
    “You were a big beer man. But you liked water with a little red wine in it at meals.”
    “I remember. L’eau rougie .”
    “ Exactement ,” Thomas Hudson said. “You were a very strong l’eau rougie man but you liked an occasional bock .”
    “I can remember in Austria going on a luge and our dog Schnautz and snow.”
    “Can you remember Christmas there?”
    “No. Just you and snow and our dog Schnautz and my nurse. She was beautiful. And I remember mother on skis and how beautiful she was. I can remember seeing you and mother coming down skiing through an orchard. I don’t know where it was. But I can remember the Jardin du Luxembourg well. I can remember afternoons with the boats on the lake by the fountain in the big garden with the trees. The paths through the trees were all gravelled and men played bowling games off to the left under the trees as we went down toward the Palace and there was a clock high up on the Palace. In the fall the leaves came down and I can remember the trees bare and the leaves on the gravel. I like to remember the fall best.”
    “Why?” David asked.
    “Lots of things. The way everything smelled in the fall and the carnivals and the way the gravel was dry on top when everything was damp and the wind on the lake to sail the boats and the wind in the trees that brought the leaves down. I can remember feeling the pigeons by me warm under the blanket when you killed them just before it was dark and how the feathers were smooth and I would stroke them and hold them close and keep my hands warm going home until the pigeons got cold too.”
    “Where did you kill the pigeons, papa?” David asked.
    “Mostly down by the Medici Fountain