Free Across the River and Into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway Page B

turn over inside him, as though some sleeping animal had rolled over in its burrow and frightened, deliciously, the other animal sleeping close beside.
    “Oh you,” he said. “Would you ever like to run for Queen of Heaven?”
    “That would be sacrilegious.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I suppose it would and I withdraw the suggestion.”
    “Richard,” she said. “No I can’t say it.”
    “Say it.”
    “No.”
    The Colonel thought, I order you to say it. And she said, “Please never look at me like that.”
    “I’m sorry,” the Colonel said. “I had just slipped into my trade unconsciously.”
    “And if we were such a thing as married would you practice your trade in the home?”
    “No. I swear it. I never have. Not in my heart.”
    “With no one?”
    “With no one of your sex.”
    “I don’t like that word your sex. It sounds as though you were practicing your trade.”
    “I throw my trade out of that God-damn window into the Grand Canal.”
    “There,” she said. “You see how quickly you practice it?”
    “All right,” he said. “I love you and my trade can gently leave.”
    “Let me feel your hand,” she said. “It’s all right. You can put it on the table.”
    “Thank you,” the Colonel said.
    “Please don’t,” she said. “I wanted to feel it because all last week, every night, or I think nearly every night, I dreamed about it, and it was a strange mixed-up dream and I dreamed it was the hand of Our Lord.”
    “That’s bad. You oughtn’t to do that.”
    “I know it. That’s just what I dreamed.”
    “You aren’t on the junk, are you?”
    “I don’t know what you mean, and please don’t make fun when I tell you something true. I dreamed just as I say.”
    “What did the hand do?”
    “Nothing. Or maybe that is not true. Mostly it was just a hand.”
    “Like this one?” The Colonel asked, looking at the misshapen hand with distaste, and remembering the two times that had made it that way.
    “Not like. It was that one. May I touch it carefully with my fingers if it does not hurt?”
    “It does not hurt. Where it hurts is in the head, the legs and the feet. I don’t believe there’s any sensation in that hand.”
    “You’re wrong,” she said. “Richard. There is very much sensation in that hand.”
    “I don’t like to look at it much. You don’t think we could skip it.”
    “Of course. But you don’t have to dream about it.”
    “No. I have other dreams.”
    “Yes. I can imagine. But I dream lately about this hand. Now that I have touched it carefully, we can talk about funny things if you like. What is there funny we should talk about?”
    “Let’s look at the people and discuss them.”
    “That’s lovely,” she said. “And we won’t do it with malice. Only with our best wit. Yours and mine.”
    “Good,” the Colonel said. “Waiter, Ancora due Martini .”
    He did not like to call for Montgomerys in a tone that could be overheard because there were two obvious Britishers at the next table.
    The male might have been wounded, the Colonel thought, although, from his looks, it seems unlikely. But God help me to avoid brutality. And look at Renata’s eyes, he thought. They are probably the most beautiful of all the beautiful things she has, with the longest honest lashes I have ever seen and she never uses them for anything except to look at you honestly and straight. What a damn wonderful girl and what am I doing here anyway? It is wicked. She is your last and true and only love, he thought, and that’s not evil. It is only unfortunate. No, he thought, it is damned fortunate and you are very fortunate.
    They sat at a small table in the corner of the room and on their right there were four women at a larger table. One of the women was in mourning; a mourning so theatrical that it reminded the Colonel of the Lady Diana Manners playing the nun in Max Reinhardt’s, “The Miracle.” This woman had an attractive, plump, naturally gay face and her mourning