“It is your room isn’t it?” the English newspaper man said.
“It’s in my name at the desk,” I said. “I sleep in it sometimes.”
“But whose is the whisky?” he asked.
“Mine,” said Manolita. “They drank that bottle so I got another.”
“You’re a good girl, daughter,” I said. “That’s three I owe you.”
“Two,” she said. “The other was a present.”
There was a huge cooked ham, rosy and white edged in a half opened tin on the table beside my typewriter and a comrade would reach up, cut himself a slice of ham with his pocket knife, and go back to the crap game. I cut myself a slice of ham.
“You’re next on the tub,” I said to Al. He had been looking around the room.
“It’s nice here,” he said. “Where did the ham come from?”
“We bought it from the Intendencia of one of the brigades,” she said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Who’s we?”
“He and I,” she said, turning her head toward the English correspondent. “Don’t you think he’s cute?”
“Manolita has been most kind,” said the Englishman. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Later on I might want to use the bed but that won’t be until much later.”
“We can have a party in my room,” Manolita said. “You aren’t cross are you, Henry?”
“Never,” I said. “Who are the Comrades shooting craps?”
“I don’t know,” said Manolita. “They came in for baths and then they stayed to shoot craps. Everyone has been very nice. You know my bad news?”
“No.”
“It’s very bad. You knew my fiancé who was in the police and went to Barcelona?”
“Yes. Sure.”
Al went into the bathroom.
“Well he was shot in an accident and I haven’t anyone I can depend on in police circles and he never got me the papers he had promised me and today I heard I was going to be arrested.”
“Why?”
“Because I have no papers and they say I hang around with you people and with people from the Brigades all the time so I am probably a spy. If my fiancé had not gotten himself shot it would have been all right. Will you help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing will happen to you if you’re all right.”
“I think I’d better stay with you to be sure.”
“And if you’re not all right that would be fine for me wouldn’t it?”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“No. If you get in trouble call me up. I never heard you ask anybody any military questions. I think you’re all right.”
“I’m really all right,” she said then, leaning over, away from the Englishman. “You think it’s all right to stay with him? Is he all right?”
“How do I know?” I said. “I never saw him before.”
“You’re being cross,” she said. “Let’s not think about it now but everyone be happy and go out to dinner.”
I went over to the crap game.
“You want to go out to dinner?”
“No, Comrade,” said the man handling the dice without looking up. “You want to get in the game?”
“I want to eat.”
“We’ll be here when you get back,” said another crap shooter. “Come on, roll, I’ve got you covered.”
“If you run into any money bring it up here to the game.”
There was one in the room I knew beside Manolita. He was from the Twelfth Brigade and he was playing the gramophone. He was a Hungarian, a sad Hungarian, not one of the cheerful kind.
“Salud Camarade,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Don’t you shoot craps?” I asked him.
“I haven’t that sort of money,” he said. “They are aviators with contracts. Mercenaries . . . They make a thousand dollars a month. They were on the Teruel front and now they have come here.”
“How did they come up here?”
“One of them knows you. But he had to go out to his field. They came for him in a car and the game had already started.”
“I’m glad you came up,” I said. “Come up any time and make yourself at home.”
“I came to play the new discs,” he said. “It does not disturb you?”
“No. It’s fine. Have a drink.”
“A little ham,” he said.
One of the crap shooters reached up and cut a slice of ham.
“You haven’t seen this guy Henry around that owns the place, have you?” he asked me.
“That’s me.”
“Oh,’ he said. “Sorry. Want to get in the game?”
“Later on,” I said.
“O.K.,” he said. Then his mouth full of ham, “Listen you tar heel bastid. Make your dice hit the wall and bounce.”
“Won’t make no difference to you, Comrade,” said the man handling the dice.
Al came out of the bathroom. He looked all clean except for some smudges around his eyes.
“You can take those off with a towel,” I said.
“What?”
“Look at yourself once more in the mirror.”
“It’s too steamy,” he said. “To hell with it, I feel clean.”
“Let’s eat,” I said. “Come on Manolita. You know each other?”
I watched her eyes run over Al.
“How are you?” Manolita said.
“I say that is a sound idea,” the Englishman said. “Do let’s eat. But where?”
“Is that a crap game?” Al said.
“Didn’t you see it when you came in?”
“No,” he said. “All I saw was the ham.”
“It’s a crap game.”
“You go and eat,” Al said. “I’m staying here.”
As we went out there were six of them on the floor and Al Wagner was reaching up to cut a slice of ham.
“What do you do, Comrade?” I heard one of the flyers say to Al.
“Tanks.”
“Tell me they aren’t any good anymore,” said the flyer.
“Tell you a lot of things,” Al said. “What you got there? Some dice?”
“Want to look at them?”
“No,” said Al. “I want to handle them.”
We went down the hall, Manolita, me and the tall Englishman, and found the boys had left already for the Gran Via restaurant. The Hungarian had stayed behind to replay the new discs. I was very hungry and the food at the Gran Via was lousy. The two who were making the film had already eaten and gone back to work on the bad camera.
This restaurant was in the basement and you had to pass a guard and go through the kitchen and down a stairs to get to it. It was a racket.
They had a millet and water soup, yellow rice with horse meat in it, and oranges for desert. There had been another dish of chickpeas with sausage in it that everybody said was terrible but it had run out. The newspaper men all sat at one table and the other tables were filled with officers and girls from Chicote’s, people from the censorship, which was then in the telephone building across the street, and various unknown citizens.
The restaurant was run by an anarchist syndicate and they sold you wine that was all stamped with the label of the royal cellars and the date it had been put in the bins. Most of it was so old that it was either corked or just plain faded out and gone to pieces. You can’t drink labels and I sent three bottles back as bad before we got a drinkable one. There was a row about this.
The waiters didn’t know the different wines. They just brought you a bottle of wine and you took your chances. They were as different from the Chicote’s waiters as black from white. These waiters were all snotty,
all over-tipped and they regularly had special dishes such as lobster or chicken that they sold extra for gigantic prices. But these had all been bought up before we got there so we just drew the soup, the rice and the oranges. The place always made me angry because the waiters were a crooked lot of profiteers and it was about as expensive to eat in, if you had one of the special dishes, as Twenty-One or the Colony in New York.
We were sitting at the table with a bottle of wine that just wasn’t bad, you know you could taste it starting to go, but it wouldn’t justify making a row about, when Al Wagner came in. He looked around the room, saw us and came over.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“They broke me,” he said.
“It didn’t take very long.”
“Not with those guys,” he said. “That’s a big game. What have they got to eat?”
I called a waiter over.
“It’s too late,” he said. “We can’t serve anything now.”
“This Comrade is in the tanks,” I said. “He has fought all day and he will fight tomorrow and he hasn’t eaten.”
“That’s not my fault,” the waiter said. “It’s too late. There isn’t anything more. Why doesn’t the Comrade eat with his unit? The army has plenty of food.”
“I asked him to eat with me.”
“You should have said something about it. It’s too late now. We are not serving anything anymore.”
“Get the headwaiter.”
The headwaiter said the cook had gone home and there was no fire in the kitchen. He went away. They were angry because we had sent the bad wine back.
“The hell with it,” said Al. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“There’s no place you can eat at this hour. They’ve got food. I’ll just have to go over and suck up to the headwaiter and give him some more money.”
I went over and did just that and the sullen waiter brought a plate of cold sliced meats, then half a spiny lobster with mayonnaise, and a salad of lettuce and lentils. The headwaiter sold this out of his private stock which he was holding out either to take home, or sell to late comers.
“Cost you much?” Al asked.
“No,” I lied.
“I’ll bet it did,” he said. “I’ll fix up with you when I get paid.”
“What do you get now?”
“I don’t know yet. It was ten pesetas a day but they’ve raised it now I’m an officer. But we haven’t got it yet and I haven’t asked.”
“Comrade,” I called the waiter. He came over, still angry that the headwaiter had gone over his head and served Al. “Bring another bottle of wine please.”
“What kind?”
“Any that is not too old so that the red is faded.”
“It’s all the same.”
I said the equivalent of like hell it is in Spanish, and the waiter brought over a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1906 that was just as good as the last claret we had was rotten.
“Boy that’s wine,” Al said. “What did you tell him to get that?”
“Nothing. He just made a lucky draw out of the bin.”
“Most of that stuff from the palace stinks.”
“It’s too old. This is a hell of a climate on wine.”
“There’s that Wise Comrade,” Al nodded across at another table.
The little man with the thick glasses that had talked to us about Largo Caballero was talking with some people I knew were very big shots indeed.
“I guess he’s a big shot,” I said.
“When they’re high enough up they don’t give a damn what they say. But I wish he would have waited until after tomorrow. It’s kind of spoiled tomorrow for me.”
I filled his glass.
“What he said sounded pretty sensible,” Al went on. “I’ve been thinking it over. But my duty is to do what I’m ordered to do.”
“Don’t worry about it and get some sleep.”
“I’m going to get in that game again if you’ll let me take a thousand pesetas,” Al said. “I’ve got a lot more than that coming to me and I’ll give you an order on my pay.”
“I don’t want any order. You can pay me when you get it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to draw it,” Al said. “I certainly sound wet, don’t I? And I know gambling’s bohemianism too. But in a game like that is the only time I don’t think about tomorrow.”
“Did you like that Manolita girl? She liked you.”
“She’s got eyes like a snake.”
“She’s not a bad girl. She’s friendly and she’s all right.”
“I don’t want any girl. I want to get back in that crap game.”
Down the table Manolita was laughing at something the new Englishman had said in Spanish. Most of the people had left the table.
“Let’s finish the wine and go,” Al said. “Don’t you want to get in that game?”
“I’ll watch you for a while,” I said and called the waiter over to bring us the bill.
“Where you go?” Manolita called down the table.
“To the room.”
“We come by later on,” she said. “This man is very funny.”
“She is making most awful sport of me,” the Englishman said. “She picks up my errors in Spanish. I say, doesn’t leche mean milk?”
“That’s one interpretation of it.”
“Does it mean something beastly too?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
“You know it is a beastly language,” he said. “Now Manolita stop pulling my leg. I say stop it.”
“I’m not pulling your leg,” Manolita laughed. “I never touched your leg. I am just laughing about the leche.”
“But it does mean milk. Didn’t you just hear Edwin Henry say so?”
Manolita started to laugh again and we got up to go.
“He’s a silly piece of work,” Al said. “I’d almost like to take her away because he’s so silly.”
“You can never tell about an Englishman,” I said. It was such a profound remark that I knew we had ordered too many bottles. Outside, in the street, it was turning cold and in the moonlight the clouds were passing very big and white across the wide, building-sided canyon of the Gran Via and we walked up the sidewalk with the day’s fresh shell holes neatly cut in the cement, their rubble still not swept away, on up the rise of the hill toward the Plaza Callao where the Florida Hotel faced down the other little hill where the wide street ran that ended at the front.
We went past the two guards in the dark outside the door of the hotel and listened a minute in the doorway as the shooting down the street strengthened into a roll of firing then dropped off.
“If it keeps up I guess I ought to go down,” Al said listening.
“That wasn’t anything,” I said. “Anyway that was off to the left by Carabanchel.”
“It sounded straight down in the Campo.”
“That’s the way the sound throws here at night. It always fools you.”
“They aren’t going to counterattack us tonight,” Al said. “When they’ve got those positions and we are up that creek they aren’t going to leave their positions to try to kick us out of that creek.”
“What creek?”
“You know the name of that creek.”
“Oh. That creek.”
“Yeah. Up that creek without a paddle.”
“Come on inside. You didn’t have to listen to that firing. That’s the way it is every night.”
We went inside, crossed the lobby, passing the night watchman at the concierge’s desk and the night watchman got up and went with us to the elevator. He pushed a button and the elevator came down. In it was a man with a white curly sheep’s wool jacket, the wool worn outside, a pink bald head, a
nd a pink, angry face. He had six bottles of champagne under his arms and in his hands and he said, “What the hell’s the idea of bringing the elevator down?”
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