Free A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

happen. If you could keep your temper it would be better but I was not good at keeping mine then and said, 'You rotten son of a bitch, what are you doing in here off your filthy beat?'
    'Don't be insulting just because you want to act like an eccentric.'
    'Take your dirty camping mouth out of here.' 'It's a public cafe. I've just as much right here as you have.' 'Why don't you go up to the Petite Chaumiere where you belong?'
    'Oh dear. Don't be so tiresome.'
    Now you could get out and hope it was an accidental visit and that the visitor had only come in by chance and there was not going to be an infestation. There were other good cafes to work in but they were a long walk away and this was my home cafe. It was bad to be driven out of the Closerie des Lilas. I had to make a stand or move. It was probably wiser to move but the anger started to come and I said, 'Listen. A bitch like you has plenty of places to go. Why do you have to come here and louse a decent cafe?'

    'I just came in to have a drink. What's wrong with that?'
    'At home they'd serve you and then break the glass.'
    'Where's home? It sounds like a charming place.'
    He was sitting at the next table, a tall fat young man with spectacles. He had ordered a beer. I thought I would ignore him and see if I could write. So I ignored him and wrote two sentences.
    'All I did was speak to you.'
    I went on and wrote another sentence. It dies hard when it is really going and you are into it.
    'I suppose you've got so great nobody can speak to you.'
    I wrote another sentence that ended the paragraph and read it over. It was still all right and I wrote the first sentence of the next paragraph.
    'You never think about anyone else or that they may have problems too.'
    I had heard complaining all my life. I found I could go on writing and that it was no worse than other noises, certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.
    'Suppose you wanted to be a writer and felt it in every part of your body and it just wouldn't come.'
    I went on writing and I was beginning to have luck now as well as the other thing.
    'Suppose once it had come like an irresistible torrent and then it left you mute and silent.'
    Better than mute and noisy, I thought, and went on writing. He was in full cry now and the unbelievable sentences were soothing as the noise of a plank being violated in the sawmill.
    'We went to Greece,' I heard him say later. I had not heard him for some time except as noise. I was ahead now and I could leave it and go on tomorrow.
    'You say you used it or you went there?'
    'Don't be vulgar,' he said. 'Don't you want me to tell you the rest?'
    'No,' I said. I closed the notebook and put it in my pocket.
    'Don't you care how it came out?'
    'No.'

    'Don't you care about life and the suffering of a fellow human being?'
    'Not you.'
    'You're beastly.'
    'Yes.'
    'I thought you could help me, Hem.'
    'I'd be glad to shoot you.'
    'Would you?'
    'No. There's a law against it.'
    'I'd do anything for you.'
    "Would you?'
    'Of course I would.'
    'Then keep the hell away from this cafe. Start with that.'
    I stood up and the waiter came over and I paid.
    'Can I walk down to the sawmill with you, Hem?'
    'No.'
    'Well, I'll see you some other time.'
    'Not here.'
    'That's perfectly right,' he said. 'I promised.'
    'What are you writing?' I made a mistake and asked.
    'I'm writing the best I can. Just as you do. But it's so terribly difficult.'
    'You shouldn't write if you can't write. What do you have to cry about it for? Go home. Get a job. Hang yourself. Only don't talk about it. You could never write.'
    'Why do you say that?'
    'Did you ever hear yourself talk?'
    'It's writing I'm talking about.'
    "Then shut up.'

    'You're just cruel,' he said. 'Everybody always said you were cruel and heartless and conceited. I always defended you. But not any more.'
    'Good.'
    'How can you be so cruel to a fellow human being?'
    'I don't know,' I said. 'Look, if you can't write why don't you learn to write